PARADISE LOST 



(BOOKS 1. AND II.) 



JOHN MILTON 




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ECLECTIC ENGLISH CLASSICS 



PARADISE LOST 

(BOOKS 1. AND 11.) 



BY 



JOHN MILTON 



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NEW YORK • : • CINCINNATI • : • CHICAGO 

AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 

1895 



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Copyriglit, 1895, ]>y 
American Book Company, 



PARADISE LOST. 
M. I 



INTRODUCTION. 



John Milton was born in Bread Street, London, on the 9th 
of December, 1608. He was the third child of John and Sarah 
Milton. His father, who had been disinherited for turning Prot- 
estant, had left the family home in Oxfordshire, and settled in 
London as a scrivener.^ He was a musician, and a composer of 
such worth that his songs were published along with those of 
Byrd, Dowland, and others of first rank of that time. We find 
little about the poet's mother. Her grandson, Edward Phillips, 
says she was '' a woman of incomparable virtue and goodness." 

"John, our author," wrote Phillips in a sketch of his uncle's 
life, " who was destined to be the ornament and glory of his 
country, was sent, together with his brother, to Paul's School, 
whereof Dr. Gill, the elder, was then chief master. . . . He 
entered into the first rudiments of learning, and advanced therein 
with that admirable success, not more by the discipline of the 
school and good instructions of his masters . . . than by his own 
happy genius, prompt wit and apprehension, and insuperable in- 
dustry ; for he generally sat up half the night, as well in voluntary 
improvements of his own choice as the exact perfecting of his 
school exercises. ... At the age of fifteen he was full ripe for 

1 Similar in functions to our notary public. 
5 



6 IXTKODUCTION. 

academic learning, and accordingly was sent to the University of 
Cambridge." 

" My father," wrote Milton, " destined me while yet a little boy 
for the study of humane letters, which I seized with such eager- 
ness, that from the twelfth year of my age I scarcely ever went 
from my lessons to bed before midnight ; which, indeed, was the 
first cause of injury to my eyes, to whose natural weakness there 
were also added frequent headaches. At which, not retarding 
my impetuosity in learning, he caused me to be daily instructed, 
both at the grammar school and under other masters at home ; 
and then, when I had acquired various tongues and also not 
some insignificant taste for the sweetness of philosophy, he sent 
me to Cambridge." 

Milton became a member of Christ's College in the Easter 
term of 1625, and chose the tutorship of William Chappell, who 
was afterwards Bishop of Cork. In his second year occurred the 
rustication of which much has been said and little known. It is 
supposed that he was sent away because of a quarrel with his 
tutor, Chappell. In a Latin elegy to his friend Diodati in the 
spring of 1626 he wrote: "At present I do not care to revisit 
the reedy Cam, nor does regret for my forbidden rooms grieve 
me. Nor am I yet in the humor to bear the threats of a harsh 
master, and other things intolerable to my disposition. If this be 
exile . . . then I refuse neither the name nor the lot of a runa- 
way, and gladly I enjoy my state of banishment." He returned, 
and took up work under a new tutor. 

It was during this interval that Milton wrote his first poem in 
English, " On the Death of a Fair Infant," the daughter of his 
sister, Mrs. Phillips. After this he composed Latin elegies and 
letters, and in English the beautiful ode " On the Morning of 



INrRODUCTION. 7 

Christ's Nativity." " It is a gift," he said, in writing to Diodati, 
" I have presented to Christ's natal day. On that very morning 
at daybreak it was first conceived." 

Afterwards he wrote the " Epitaph upon the Marchioness of 
Winchester," and the sonnet " On Attaining the Age of Twenty- 
three." With this latter poem, which Milton sent to a friend, 
went a remarkable letter, saying that "' the very fear of the pun- 
ishment denounced against him who hid the talent restrains him, 
so that he takes no thought of being late so it gave advantage 
to be more fit ; for those that were latest lost nothing when the 
Master of the vineyard came to give every man his hire." 

"Soon after he had taken his master's degree (1632) he 
thought fit to leave the university ; not upon any disgust or dis- 
content for want of preferment, as some ill-willers have reported ; 
nor upon any cause whatsoever forced to fly, as his detractors 
maliciously feign." The rooms he occupied while a student are 
still pointed out. " His father, having got an estate to his 
content [at Horton, near Colebrook, in Berkshire], and left off 
all business, was retired from the cares and fatigues of the 
world." Thither Milton went, and for more than five years 
" spent there a complete holiday in turning over the Greek and 
Latin writers," varying his life by journeys to London for 
" something new in mathematics or music, in which sciences he 
dehghted." Amid the quiet and peace of Horton and its 
woods and fields, he wrote poems which reflect such hfe, — the 
sonnet "To the Nightingale," "L' Allegro" and "II Pense- 
roso," the " Arcades " and " Comus," and, perhaps a little later, 
the exquisite " Lycidas," the last of his English lyrics. 

" After the said term of five years," continues his nephew 
Phillips, " his mother then dying, he was wiUing to add to his 



S INTRODUCTIOX. 

acquired learning the observation of foreign customs, manners, 
and institutions, and thereupon took a resolution to travel, more 
especially designing for Italy ; and accordingly, with his father's 
consent and assistance, he put himself into an equipage suitable 
to such a design. ... At Paris ... he went first to wait upon 
my Lord Scudamore, then ambassador in France from King 
Charles I. My lord received him with wonderful civility, and, 
understanding he had a desire to make a visit to the great Hugo 
Grotius, he sent several of his attendants to wait upon him, and 
to present him in his name to that renowned doctor and states- 
man, who was at that time ambassador from Christina, Queen of 
Sweden, to the French King. . Grotius took the visit kindly, and 
gave him entertainment suitable to his worth and the high com- 
mendations he had heard of him. After a few days, not intend- 
ing to make the usual tour of France, he took his leave of my 
lord, who at his departure from Paris gave him letters to the 
English merchants residing in any part through which he was to 
travel, in which they were requested to show him all the kindness, 
and to do him all the good offices, that lay in their power. 

" From Paris he hastened on his journey to Nice, where he 
took shipping, and in a short space arrived at Genoa, from 
whence he went to Leghorn, thence to Pisa, and so to Florence. 
In this city he met with many charming objects, which invited him 
to stay a longer time than he intended, — the pleasant situation 
of the place, the nobleness of the structures, the exact humanity 
and civility of the inhabitants, the more polite and refined sort of 
language there than elsewhere. During the time of his stay here, 
which was about two months, he visited all the private academies 
of the city, which are places established for the improvement of 
wit and learning. . . . Visiting these places, he was soon taken 



INTRODUCTIOX. 9 

notice of by the most learned and ingenious of the nobihty and 
the grand wits of Florence, who caressed him with all the honors 
and civilities imaginable. . . . 

"From Florence he took his journey to Sienna; from thence 
to Rome, where he was detained much about the same time he 
had been at Florence, as well by his desire of seeing all the 
rarities and antiquities of that most glorious and renowned city 
as by the conversation of Lucas Holstenius and other learned and 
ingenious men, who highly valued his acquaintance, and treated 
him with all possible respect. 

" From Rome lie traveled to Naples, where he was introduced 
by a certain hermit, who accompanied him in his journey from 
Rome thither, into the knowledge of Giovanni Baptista Manso, 
Marquis of Villa, a Neapolitan by birth, a person of liigh nobil- 
ity, virtue, and honor," who " received him with extraordinary 
respect and civility, and went with him himself to give him a 
sight of all that was of note and remark in the city, particularly 
the viceroy's palace, and was often in person to visit him at his 
lodgings." 

Milton "had entertained some thoughts of passing over into 
Sicily apd Greece, but was diverted by the news he received 
from England, that affairs there were tending towards a civil war, 
thinking it a thing unworthy in him to be taking his pleasure in 
foreign parts while his countrymen at home were fighting for their 
liberty. ... To Rome the second time he went, determining with 
himself not industriously to begin to fall into any discourse about 
religion, but, being asked, not to deny, or endeavor to conceal, 
his own sentiments. Two months he staid at Rome, and in all 
that time never flinched ; . . . and so, returning through France 
by the same way he had passed it going to Italy, he, after a 



I o INTROD UCTIOX. 

peregrination of one complete year and about three months, 
arrived safe in England." This was in July, 1639. 

" Soon after his return, and visits paid to his father and other 
friends, he took him a lodging in St. Bride's Churchyard at the 
house of Russell, a tailor, where he first undertook the education 
and instruction of his sister's two sons." He soon after removed 
to " a pretty garden house," and there received for instruction 
"the sons of gentlemen who were his intimate friends." 

From this time on for twenty years, Milton produced in poetry 
only a few sonnets. He gave himself, siding first with the 
Presbyterians and later with the Puritans, to the controversy 
with episcopacy and the incipient struggle of the Commonwealth. 
He resolved, he said, ''to transfer into this struggle all his genius 
and all the strength of his industry." In 164 1 he pubhshed his 
pamphlet " Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in Eng- 
land," and afterwards his fierce *' Apology for Smectymnuus." 
Other pamphlets, maintaining the controversy in a coarse and 
virulent spirit, followed from his pen. 

In 1643 he married. His wife's refusal for a time to live with 
him led him to publish " Doctrine and Disciphne of Divorce," 
the first of four tracts he wrote in advocacy of divorce. In 1644 
appeared also his '' Tractate on Education," to the consideration 
of which subject the training of his pupils had led him. The 
" Areopagitica, or Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing," 
appeared too in this year. " On the subject of the liberation of 
the press," wrote Milton, " so that the judgment of the true and 
the false, what should be punished and what suppressed, should 
not be in the hands of a few men ... on this subject, in the 
form of an express oration, I wrote my 'Areopagitica.'" In 
1645 he edited the first collection of his poems. 



IXTRODUCTION. i i 

From this time until the death of Charles I., Milton's prose 
works reflected his quieter home hfe, and were in the main of the 
milder doctrinal and historical form. Two weeks after the exe- 
cution of the King, he pubhshed " The Tenure of Kings and 
Magistrates," in which he claimed that men are born free ; they 
band together for mutual aid and preservation ; they choose a 
ruler or king ; they may depose him at their will. The writing 
of the tract was voluntary. His reward was the Secretaryship of 
Foreign Tongues, or Latin Secretaryship to the new Council of 
State. The office involved upon its face the writing of letters to 
foreign governments. Not so plainly, it included the duties of 
political pamphleteer. In using his pen to support the dominant 
party, the government, he foreran Swift and Defoe and other of 
the wits of Anne's day. 

Shortly after the death of the King appeared " Eikon Basilike," 
or " Portraiture of his Sacred Majesty in his Solitude and Suffer- 
ing." It was at that time commonly supposed to be written by 
Charles. Milton, in duty to the Council, answered in " Eikon- 
oklastes." He sketched the King's character in a bold and 
abusive manner, and confuted the arguments of the first book. 
His next. work, " Defensio pro Populo Anglicano," was in retort 
to " Defensio Regia pro Carolo I.," which Salmasius, a famous 
professor at Leyden, had written at the wish of Charles II. in 
exile. The writing of the " Defensio " cost him his sight. His 
left eye was already bhnd. But the State was in greatest need of 
his service. " In such a case," he wrote, " I could not listen to a 
physician, not if ^sculapius himself had spoken from his sanctu- 
ary: I could not but obey that inward monitor, I know not 
what, that spoke to me from heaven. ... I concluded to 
employ the little remaining eyesight I was to enjoy in doing this, 



I 2 INTK OD UC TION. 

the greatest service to the commonweal it was in my power 
to render." Referring to his eyes again in 1655, ^^^ answered 
Cyriac Skinner : — 

" What supports me, dost thou ask? 
The conscience, Friend, to have lost them overplied 
In liberty's defense, my noble task, 
Of which all Europe rings from side to side." 

In the years that passed to the breaking up of the Puritan ad- 
ministration and the return of the Stuarts, Milton wrote much else 
in prose. Nearly all was controversial, and nearly all scurrile in 
personalities and recrimination. He did after the manner of his 
times. But on nearly every page we find the strong preservative 
of Milton's intellect, — his intense love of liberty, and the stroke 
of the pen weighted with vast stores of learning. His second 
wife, whom he married in 1656, died in the following year. It 
is of her he speaks in his sonnet : — 

*' Methought I saw my late espoused saint." 

The end of the Commonwealth brought an end to the duties 
of Latin secretary, and for a time to the fame and dignity which 
he had enjoyed. During Cromwell's protectorate " he was 
mightily importuned," says an old writer, " to go into France 
and Italy. Foreigners much admired him, and offered him great 
preferments to come over to them, and chiefly came to England 
to see O. Protector and Mr. J. Milton, and would see the house 
and chamber where he was born." 

But after the Restoration he lived in a narrower way, with his 
three daughters. The two youngest, wrote his nephew, were " con- 
demned to the performance of reading and exactly pronouncing 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

of all the languages of whatever book he should think fit to peruse •. 
the Hebrew (and I think the Syriac), the Greek, the Latin, the 
Itahan, Spanish, and French, — a trial of patience beyond endur- 
ance. It was endured by both for a time ; yet the irksomeness 
of this employment could not alw^ays be concealed, but broke out 
more and more into expressions of uneasiness, so that at length 
they were all, even the eldest also, sent out to learn embroideries 
in gold and silver," During these trials he married a third wife, 
who survived him. 

He was now absorbed in the composition of " Paradise Lost." 
It was finished in 1665, and pubhshed in 1667. For it he re- 
ceived ten pounds from the publisher ; and after his death his 
widow w^as given eight pounds. When his friend EUwood, who 
had read the manuscript, returned it to him, he said, "Thou 
hast said much here of Paradise lost; but what hast thou to 
say of Paradise found ? " This remark may have led Milton to 
the composition of the smaller epic of " Paradise Regained," 
which he published, together with his tragedy of " Samson 
Agonistes," in 1671. 

Of his appearance at this time. Dr. Wright, a clergyman, wrote, 
that he found "John Milton, then growing old, in a small cham- 
ber hung with rusty green, sitting in an elbowchair, and dressed 
neatly in black ; pale, but not cadaverous ; his hands and fingers 
gouty, and with chalkstones. He used to sit in a gray coarse 
cloth coat at the door of his house near Bunhill Fields, in warm, 
sunny weather, to enjoy the fresh air. And so, as well as in his 
room, he received the visits of people of distinguished parts, as 
well as quahty." His appearance earlier in hfe is described as 
pleasing, his manners affable, his " gait erect and manly, bespeak- 
ing courage and undauntedness," his complexion a " dehcate white 



14 INTRODUCTIOX. 

and red," his hair a hght brown. He was called the " Lady " of 
his college at Cambridge. 

He had long suffered from gout, and from this he died on the 
8th of November, 1674, He had, wrote his nephew, " a very de- 
cent interment, according to his quality, in the Church of St. 
Giles, Cripplegate, being attended from his house to the church 
by several gentlemen then in town, his principal wellwishers and 
admirers." 

" Nothing is here for tears, nothing to wail 
Or knock the heart; no weakness, no contempt, 
Dispraise, or blame; nothing but well and fair. 
And what may quiet us in a death." 

"In the private academies of Italy," wrote Milton in 1641, 
" whither I was favored to resort, perceiving that some trifles 
which I had in memory, composed at under twenty or there- 
abouts . . . met with acceptance above what was looked for ; 
and other things which I had shifted, in scarcity of books and 
conveniences, to patch up amongst them, were received with 
written encomiums, which the Italian is not forward to bestow 
on men of this side the Alps ; I began thus far to assent both to 
them and divers of my friends here at home, and not less to an 
inward prompting which now grew daily upon me, that by labor 
and intense study (which I take to be my portion in this life), 
joined with the strong propensity of nature, I might perhaps leave 
something so written to after times, as they should not wiUingly 
let die." 

In this passage we have doubtless an expression of the ambition 
which led to the composition of "Paradise Lost." In his earlier 



iNTR on UC riON. I 5 

years Milton thought a " king or knight before the Conquest 
might be chosen on whom to lay the pattern of a Christian hero." 
He at one time had determined to treat the legends which cen- 
ter about Arthur and his court ; but later on, with the growth 
of an intense Puritanism, and the ideas which lay back of it, — 
an exalted idea of duty, of excellence, of liberty, — his purpose 
changed to the singing the Hebraic story of the fall of man. 

To this material from the Bible he brought the learning and 
traditions of the great Hterature of the Greeks and their Latin 
imitators. In other words, Milton used the methods of the mas- 
ters of epic poetry — Homer, Virgil, and Dante — and the story 
of the origin of evil in the world as told in the Hebrew Scripture. 
Out of this, with magnificent power and supreme artistic motive, 
he constructed a mythology of persons and episodes which, dur- 
ing the whole reign of Puritanism, and among many for some 
time after, was accepted as the orthodox creed of Christianity. 
The force of the poem on the religious imagination of men is 
no^\^nearly gone ; but in theological lines it has been one of the 
most potent forces of the old Puritanism. By many it was 
looked upon as a sacred book. Its infallibility was asserted, and 
the connection of its subject with Christian theology made it 
popular. ' 

His times made it possible for Milton to compose it. A heroic 
poem can only be written in, or out of the memory of, heroic 
times. It was born of the stirring times of the Commonwealth, 
out of the days of Charles I. and the moral vigor of the men 
who gathered their strength, and rose up against his tyranny. 

The verse is blank verse, the unrhymed meter containing ten 
syllables and five accents. Milton's preface, " The Verse " (p. i8), 
explains the reasons of its use. At rare intervals his accents de- 



1 6 IX TROD UC TION. 

mand the change from common usage. In such instances we must 
remember that he wrote with the hberties of a great master, and 
in a style so subhme and so sustained that we may hghtly pass 
over trivial variations. 

In these first two of the twelve books of " Paradise Lost " the 
poem refers to heaven, or the empyrean, chaos, hell, and our earth 
and its stellar system. The poetic conception is this : heaven is 
above, of infinite extent, but walled with crystal on the side of 
chaos : in the wall is a great gate. At the depths of chaos, nine 
days' fall from heaven, is hell. It is circular, and at its center 
is a lake of fire. To this four rivers run. About the lake is a 
burning continent, and ringing this dry land a belt of moist earth 
which can bring no ease. Still more remote is a frozen circle. 
Our system hangs in chaos with a golden chain from heaven. 
About the earth move the sun and our planets. 

"Milton," says a late critic, Edmond Scherer, "has always 
the strong, sure touch of the master. His power of diction and 
of rhythm is unsurpassable, and it is characterized by being 
always present, not depending on an access of emotion, not 
intermittent. . . . 

" Shakespeare himself, divine as are his gifts, has not, of the 
marks of the master, this one, — perfect sureness of style. Alone 
of English poets, alone in Enghsh art, Milton has it : he is our 
great artist in style, our one first-rate master in the grand style. 
He is as truly a master in this style as the great Greeks are, or 
Virgil, or Dante. The number of such masters is so limited, that 
a man acquires a world rank in poetry and art, instead of a mere 
local rank, by being counted to them. . . . 

" For the English artist in any branch, if he is a true artist, the 
study of Milton may well have an indescribable attraction. It 



TNTR on UC TION. t 7 

gives him lessons which nowhere else from an Englishman's work 
can he obtain, and feeds a sense which English literature in gen- 
eral seems too much bent on disappointing and baffling. And 
this sense is yet so deep-seated in human nature, this sense of 
style, that probably not for artists alone, but for all intelligent 
Englishmen who read him, its gratification by Milton's poetry is 
a large, though often not fully recognized, part of his charm." 

" Three poets, in three distant ages born, 
Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. 
The first in loftiness of thought surpassed ; 
The next, in majesty; in both the last. 
The force of Nature could no further go ; 
To make a third, she joined the former two." 

Dkyden : Under Milton's Picture. 



\ 



1 8 IXTR on UC TIOlV. 



THE VERSE.i 

The measure is English heroic verse without rhyme, as that 
of Homer in Greek and of Virgil in Latin ; rhyme being no 
necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse, in 
longer works especially, but the invention of a barbarous age to 
set off wretched matter and lame meter ; graced indeed since by 
the use of some famous modern poets, carried away by custom, 
but much to their own vexation, hindrance, and constraint to 
express many things otherwise, and for the most part worse, than 
else they would have expressed them. Not without cause, there- 
fore, some both Itahan and Spanish poets of prime note have 
rejected rhyme both in longer and shorter works, as have also 
long since our best Enghsh tragedies, as a thing of itself, to 
all judicious ears, trivial and of no true musical delight ; which 
consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the 
sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the 
jingling sound of like endings, — a fault avoided by the learned 
ancients both in poetry and all good oratory. This neglect, then, 
of rhyme so little is to be taken for a defect, — though it may 
seem so, perhaps, to vulgar readers, — that it rather is to be 
esteemed an example set, the first in English, of ancient liberty 
recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern 
bondage of rhyming. 

1 In the first issue of the first edition of Paradise Lost (1667), The Verse 
and The Argument, or epitome, did not precede the text. Later on, after a 
new title-page, appeared the following address by the printer : — 

Courteous Reader, There was no Argument at first intended to the 
Book, but for the satisfaction of many that have desired it, I have procur'd it, 
and withall a reason of that which stumbled many others, why the Poem 
Rimes not. — S. Simmons. 



PARADISE LOST. 



BOOK I. 

THE ARGUMENT. 



This First Book proposes, first in brief, the whole subject, — man's disobedience and the loss 
thereupon of Paradise, wherein he was placed : then touches the prime cause of his fall, — 
the serpent, or rather Satan in the serpent, who revolting from God, and drawing to his side 
many legions of angels, was by the command of God driven out of heaven, with all his 
crew, into the great deep. Which action passed over, the poem hastens into the midst of 
things, presenting Satan, with his angels, now fallen into hell, described here, not in the 
center (for heaven and earth may be supposed as yet not made, certainly not yet accursed), 
but in a place of utter darkness, fitliest called Chaos. Here Satan with his angels, lying on 
the burning lake, thunderstruck and astonished, after a certain space recovers, as from confu- 
sion ; calls up him who, next in order and dignity, lay by him. They confer of their miserable 
fall. Satan awakens all his legions, who lay till then in the same m.anner confounded. They 
rise: their numbers: array of battle; their chief leaders named, according to the idols known 
afterwards in Canaan and the countries adjoining. To these Satan directs his speech; com- 
forts them with hope yet of regaining heaven, but tells them, lastly, of a new world and new 
kind b£ creature to be created, according to an ancient prophecy, or report, in heaven ; for 
that angels were long before this visible creation, was the opinion of many ancient fathers. 
To find out the truth of this prophecy, and what to determine thereon, he refers to a full 
council. What his associates thence attempt. Pandemonium, the palace of Satan, rises, sud- 
denly built out of the deep : the infernal peers there sit in council. 

Of man's first disobedience, and the fruit 
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste 
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,^ 
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man 

1 The poem opens with a reference to the old Hebraic explanation of the 
origin of evil, the presence of sin in the world, which is found in Gen. ii. 17: 
" But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: 
for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." " In Adam's 
fall, we sinned all," in the phrase of the New England Primer. 

19 



20 MILTON. [BOOK I. 

Restore us,i and regain the blissful seat, 5 

Sing, heavenly Muse,- that, on the secret top 

Of Oreb or of Sinai,^ didst inspire 

That shepherd who first taught the chosen seed* 

In the beginning how the heavens and earth 

Rose out of Chaos :^ or, if Sion^ hill 10 

Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook ^ that flowed 

Fast by the oracle of God, I thence 

Invoke thy aid to my adventrous song. 

That with no middle flight intends to soar 

Above the Aonian mount,^ while it pursues 15 

Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. 

And chiefly thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer 

1 See Rom. v. 19-21. 

2 In his opening of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Homer, the father of epic 
poetry, invokes the aid of the goddess of poetry. Epic singers since his time 
have followed his appeal for inspiration. But Milton was a Puritan, and he 
could not, from the religious nature of his song, call upon a Pagan divinity. 
He therefore begs the aid of the divine inspiration which moved Moses and 
other prophets. 

3 Horeb and Sinai are two peaks of the same mountain, upon which Moses 
" kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. . . . And 
the Angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst 
of a bush." To Moses has been ascribed the first five books of the Bible 
(see Exod. xviii. 20). 

4 The chosen people of God were the Israelites (see Deut. iv. 37, x. 15 ; 
I Chron. xvi. 13). 

5 The confused condition of the universe before order and law prevailed. 

6 Sion was one of the hills upon which Jerusalem was built. Here David 
lived, and composed poems under the inspiration, Milton supposes, of his 
heavenly Muse. 

'^ Between Sion and Mount Moriah, and almost beneath the temple, " fast 
by the oracle of God," flowed, and still flows, " Siloa's brook." Its fountain 
is the pool Siloam, which ebbs and rises. Isaiah identifies it with himself: 
" Forasmuch as this people refuseth the waters of Shiloah that go softly" 
(Isa. viii. 6) ; and Milton here means a poetic reference to him. 

8 Mount Helicon, a haunt of the Muses, was in Boeotia, a part of which 
was sometimes called Aonia. Milton means that his song shall not be mean 
or middling, but even above those of the Greek poets. 



Boonv I.] PARADISE LOST. 21 

Before all temples the upright heart and pure, 

Instruct me,i for thou know'st ; thou from the first 

Wast present, and, with mighty wings outspread, 20 

Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast abyss,^ 

And mad'st it pregnant : ^ what in me is dark 

Illumine, what is low raise and support ; 

That, to the highth * of this great argument,^ 

I may assert Eternal Providence, 25 

And justify the ways of God to men. 

Say first — for heaven hides nothing from thy view, 
Nor the deep, tract of hell — say first what cause 
Moved our grand ^ parents, in that happy state, 
Favored of Heaven so highly, to fall off 30 

From their Creator, and transgress his will 
For one restraint, lords of the world besides. 
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt ? 

The infernal serpent ; "^ he it was whose guile, 
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived 35 

The mother of mankind, what time ^ his pride 
Had cast him out from heaven, with all his host 
Of rebel angels, by whose aid, aspiring 
To set himself in glory above his peers, 

He trusted^to have equaled the Most High, 40 

If he opposed, and, with ambitious aim 

1 The poet's appeal for inspiration recalls the testimony of his widow 
many years after his death. " Being asked whether he did not often read 
Homer and Virgil, she understood it as an imputation upon him for stealing 
from those authors, and answered with eagerness, that he stole from nobody 
but the Muse who inspired him ; and, being asked by a lady present who the 
Muse was, replied it was God's grace, and the Holy Spirit that visited him 
nightly." 

2 See Gen. i. 2. 

3 " Mad'st it pregnant." The allusion is to the formation of the earth out 
of void, and also to the formation of living things. 

4 Milton's spelling of " height." 5 Subject. ^ Great. 

7 See Gen. iii. ; Rev. xii. 9. ^ " What time," i.e., at the time when. 



2 2 iMILTON. [BOOK I. 

Against the throne and monarchy of God, 

Raised impious war in heaven and battle proud. 

With vain attempt. Him the Almighty Power 

Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky, 45 

With hideous ruin ^ and combustion,- down 

To bottomless perdition, there to dwell 

In adamantine chains and penal fire, 

Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms. 

Nine times the space that measures day and night ^ 50 

To mortal men, he with his honid crew 
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf, 
Confounded, though immortal. But his doom 
Reserved him to more wrath ; for now the thought 
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain 55 

Torments him : round he throws his baleful eyes, 
That witnessed^ huge affliction and dismay, 
Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate. 
At once, as far as angel's ken,-'' he views 

The dismal situation waste and wild. 60 

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, 
As one great furnace flamed ; yet from those flames 
No light, but rather darkness visible 
Served only to discover^' sights of woe, 

Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace 65 

And rest can never dwell, hope never comes," 
That comes to all, but torture without end 

1 Downfall, the sense of the Latin word riiina, from which it comes. 

2 Fierce burning. 

3 In these nine days was the creation of the world, according to Milton's 
cosmogony. They succeeded the nine days in which Satan fell (Paradise 
Lost, Book VI. 871). 

4 Bore witness to. 

5 " As far as angel's ken," i.e., as far as an angel can see. 

6 Show ; reveal. 

'^ " All hope abandon, ye who enter here," was the inscription over the 
gate of Dante's hell. 



BOOK I.] PARADISE LOST. 23 

Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed 

With ever-burning sulphur uncorisumed. 

Such place Eternal Justice had prepared 70 

For those rebellious ; here their prison ordained 

In utter 1 darkness, and their portion set. 

As far removed from God and light of heaven 

As from the center thrice to the utmost pole.^ 

Oh, how unlike the place from whence they fell ! 75 

lliere the companions of his fall, o'erwhelmed 

With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous. fire, 

He soon discerns ; and, weltering by his side. 

One next himself in power, and next in crime. 

Long after known in Palestine, and named 80 

Beelzebub.^ To whom the Arch-Enemy, 

And thence in heaven called Satan,'* with bold words 

Breaking the horrid silence, thus began : — 

"If thou beest he — but oh, how fallen ! how changed 
From him, who in the happy realms of light, 85 

Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst outshine 
Myriads, though bright ! — if he whom mutual league, 
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope 
And hazard in the glorious enterprise, 

Joined with me once, now misery hath joined 90 

In equal ruin i^^into what pit thou seest 
From what highth fahen : so much the stronger proved 
He with his thunder: and till then who knew 
The force of those dire arms ? Yet not for those. 
Nor what the potent victor in his rage 95 

Can else inflict, do I repent, or change, 

1 Outer. 

2 As from the center of the earth (according to Milton's system) three 
times to the utmost vault of heaven. 

3 A god worshiped at Ekron, a city of Palestine (see 2 Kings i. 2). Mil- 
ton would represent him as a devil. In Matt. xii. 24, Beelzebub is called 
" prince of devils." 

^ " Satan " means " adversary " in Hebrew. 



24 MILTON. [hook l 

Though changed in outward luster, that fixed mind, 

And high disdain from sense of injured merit, 

That with the Mightiest raised me to contend, , 

And to the fierce contention brought along loo 

Innumerable force of Spirits armed, 

That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring, 

His utmost power with adverse power opposed 

In dubious battle on the plains of heaven. 

And shook his throne. What though the field be lost ? 105 

All is not lost, — the unconquerable will, 

And study of revenge, immortal hate. 

And courage never to submit or yield : 

And what is else not to be overcome ? 

That glory never shall his wTatli or might no 

Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace 

With suppliant knee, and deify his power 

Who, from the terror of this arm, so late 

Doubted his empire : that were low indeed ; 

That were an ignominy and shame beneath 115 

This downfall ; since by fate ^ the strength of gods 

And this empyreal ^ substance cannot fail; 

Since, through experience of this great event. 

In arms not worse, in foresight much advanced, 

We may with more successful hope resolve 120 

To wage by force or guile eternal war, 

Irreconcilable to our grand Foe, 

Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy 

Sole reigning holds the tyranny^ of heaven." 

So spake the apostate Angel, though in pain 125 

1- It was an old Greek conception that the gods were subject to an un- 
bending fate. 

2 The substance of the angels Satan calls " empyreal ;" that is, formed 
from pure fire or light. 

3 " Tyranny " has here its Greek meaning, — supreme power, of which one 
might possess himself by persuasion, force, or deceit. 



i;ooK I.] PARADISE LOST. 25 

Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair ; 
And him thus answered soon his bold compeer: — 

" O Prince, O chief of many throned powers ^ 
That led the embattled - seraphim "^ to war 

Under thy conduct, and, in dreadful deeds 130 

Fearless, endangered heaven's perpetual King, 
And put to proof his high supremacy 
Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or fate ! 
Too well I see and rue the dire event 

That, with sad overthrow and foul defeat, 135 

Hath lost us heaven, and all this mighty host 
In horrible destruction laid thus low. 
As far as gods and heavenly essences 
Can perish ; for the mind and spirit remains 
Invincible, and vigor soon returns, 140 

Though all our glory extinct, and happy state 
Here swallowed up"^ in endless misery. 
But what if he our Conqueror (whom I now 
Of force 5 believe almighty, since no less 

Than such could have o'erpowered such force as ours) 145 

Have left us this our spirit and strength entire, 
Strongly to suffer and support our pains. 
That we may so sufiEice his vengeful ire, 
Or do him mightier service as his thralls 

By right of war, whate'er his business be, 150 

Here in the heart of hell to work in fire, 
Or do his errands in the gloomy deej) ? 
What can it then avail though yet we feel 
Strength undiminished, or eternal being 
To undergo eternal punishment ? " 155 

1 See line 360; see also Rom. viii. 38; Epli. i. 21 ; Col. i. 16. 

2 Drawn up in battle array. ^ The Hebrew plural of seraph. 

•* '* Though all," etc., i.e., though all our glory be extinct, and all our 
happy state be swallowed up. 

5 " Of force,'"' i.e., perforce; of necessity. 



2 6 MILTON. [book i. 

Whereto with speedy words the Arch- Fiend repHed : — 
" Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable, 
Doing or suffering: but of this be sure, — 
To do aught good never will be our task, 

But ever to do ill our sole delight, i6o 

As being the contrary to His high will 
Whom we resist. If then his providence 
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good, 
Our labor must be to pervert that end, 

And out of good still to find means of evil; 165 

Which ofttimes may succeed so as perhaps 
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb 
His inmost counsels from their destined aim. 
But see ! the angry Victor hath recalled 

His ministers of vengeance and pursuit 170 

Back to the gates of heaven: the sulphurous hail, 
Shot after us in storm, o'erblown hath laid ^ 
The hery surge that from the precipice 
Of heaven received us falling ; and the thunder, 
Winged with red lightning and impetuous rage, 175 

Perhaps hath spent his - shafts, and ceases now 
To bellow through the vast and boundless deep. 
Let us not slip ^ the occasion, whether scorn 
Or satiate fury yield it from our foe. 

Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild, 180 

The seat of desolation, void of light. 
Save what the glimmering of these livid flames 
Casts pale and dreadful ? Thither let us tend 
From off the tossing of these fierv waves ; 

There rest, if any rest can harbor there; 185 

And reassembling our afflicted powers, 

1 Stilled ; calmed. 

2 " His " for " its " is a survival of the genitive neuter of the Anglo-Saxon 
personal pronoun. 

3 Lose by oversight. 



BOOK I.] PARADISE LOST. 27 

Consult how we may henceforth most offend 

Our enemy, our own loss how repair, 

How overcome this dire calamity, 

What reenforcement we may gain from hope, 190 

If not, what resolution from despair." 

Thus Satan talking to his nearest mate, 
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes 
That sparkling blazed ; his other parts besides 
Prone on the flood, extended long and large, 195 

Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge 
As whom the fables name of monstrous size, 
Titanian,^ or Earth-born, that warred on Jove, 
Briareos,^ or Typhon,^ whom the den 

By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea beast 200 

Leviathan,'* which God of all his works 
Created hugest that swim the ocean stream. 
Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam. 
The pilot of some small night-foundered ^ skiff. 
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, 205 

With fixed anchor in his scaly rind. 
Moors by his side under the lee, while night 
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays,^ 

1 In Greek fable the Titans were sons of Heaven (Uranus) and Earth 
(Gaia), who maimed and deposed Uranus. Zeus defeated and drove them 
down to Tartavsus. 

2 A giant with a hundred hands, who, Virgil says, warred against Zeus, 

3 A monster with a hundred heads, the father of the evil winds, who 
wished to gain rule over men and gods. His den was said to be in Cilicia, 
of which Tarsus was the capital. 

* A sea monster referred to in the Ril)le. It may mean the whale or 
crocodile, or possibly enormous sea dwellers, which, some scientists claim, 
were left over from a former geologic age. 

5 Lost in the darkness of night. 

6 Olaus Magnus, Archbishop of Ujisal in the sixteenth century, told such 
fables in his History of the Northern Nations, a book translated into English 
in 1658. The English Hakluyt also has such an account in his Voyages. 
We fmd it again in the Eastern tale of Sindbad the Sailor. 



28 MILTON. BOOK 1.] 

So stretched out huge in length the Arch-Fiend lay, 

Chained on the burning lake; nor ever thence 210 

Had risen, or heaved his head, but that the will 

And high permission of all-ruling Heaven 

Left him at large to his own dark designs, 

That with reiterated crimes he might 

Heap on himself damnation, while he sought 215 

Evil to others, and enraged might see 

How all his malice served but to bring forth 

Infinite goodness, grace, and merc}^, shown 

On man b}^ him seduced, but on himself 

Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance poured. 220 

Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool 
His mighty stature ; on each hand the flames 
Driven backward slope their pointing spires, and, rolled 
In billows, leave i' the midst a horrid vale. 

Then with expanded wings he steers his flight 225 

Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air, 
That felt unusual weight, till on dry land 
He hghts, if it were land that ever burned 
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire ; 

And such appeared in hue as when the force 230 

Of subterranean wind transports a hill 
Torn from Pelorus,i or the shattered side 
Of thundering yEtna, whose combustible 
And fueled entrails, thence conceiving fire, 

Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds, 235 

And leave a singed bottom all involved 
With stench and smoke. Such resting found the sole 
Of unblest feet. Him followed his next mate, 
Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian ^ flood 

1 The northeast point of Sicily. In the /EneicI, Virgil refers to the sev- 
ering of Italy and Sicily, and tells how with vast ruin the sea rushed in 
between. 

2 Of the Styx, a river of hell. 



BOOK I.] PARADISE LOST. 29 

As gods, and by their own recovered strength, 240 

Not by the sufferance 1 of supernal power. 

"Is this the region, this the soil, the clime," 
Said then the lost Archangel, " this the seat 
That we must change for heaven ? this mournful gloom 
For that celestial hght ? Be it so, since he 245 

Who now is sovran ^ can dispose and bid 
AVhat shall be right : farthest from him is best. 
Whom reason hath equaled, force hath made supreme 
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields. 

Where joy forever dwells ! Hail, horrors ! hail, 250 

Infernal world ! and thou, profoundest hell. 
Receive thy new possessor, — one who brings 
A mind not to be changed by place or time. 
The mind is its own place, and in itself 

Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. 255 

What matter where, if I be still the same, 
And what I should be, all but less than he 
Whom thunder hath made greater ? Here at least 
We shall be free ; the Almighty hath not built 
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence : 260 

Here we may reign secure ; and, in my choice, 
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell : 
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven. 
But wherefore let we then our faithful friends, 
The associates"^nd copartners of our loss, 265 

Tie thus astonished ^ on the oblivious pool,^ 
And call them not to share with us their part 
In this unhappy mansion, or once more 
With rallied arms to try what may be yet 
Regained in heaven, or what more lost in hell ? " 270 

1 Consent ; allowance. 

2 The form in which Milton spelled " sovereign." The word is from the 
Latin stipremtis, through the old French sovrain, souveraiti. 

3 Bewildered ; confounded. 4 Causing forgetfulness. 



3° MILTON. [BOOK I. 

So Satan spake ; and him Beelzebub 
Thus answered : " Leader of those armies bright 
Which, but the Omnipotent, none could have foiled ! 
If once they hear that voice, their Hveliest pledge 
Of hope in fears and dangers, — heard so oft 275 

In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge ' 
Of battle, when it raged, in all assaults 
Their surest signal, — they will soon resume 
New courage and revive, though now they lie 
GroveHng and prostrate on yon lake of fire, 280 

As we ere while, astounded and amazed ; 
No wonder, fallen such a pernicious highth ! " 

He scarce had ceased Mdien the superior Fiend 
Was moving towards the shore ; his ponderous shield, 
Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, 285 

Behind him cast. The broad circumference 
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb 
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist 2 views 
At evening from the top of Fesole,^ 

Or in Valdarno,'^ to descry new lands, 290 

Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe. 
His spear — to equal which the tallest pine 
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast 
Of some great ammiral,^ were but a wand — 
He walked with, to support uneasy steps ^ 295 

Over the burning marl,^ not hke those steps 
On heaven's azure ; and the torrid clime 
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire. 



1 Front of battle, as the Latin acies ; or it may mean perilous crisis. 

2 In his continental journey in 1638-39, Milton visited Galileo, the Tuscan 
artist or astronomer, who had improved the telescope, and discovered the 
unevenness of the moon's surface, Jupiter's satellites, the composition of 
the Milky Way, etc. 

3 A hill near Florence. 4 The vale or valley of the Arno. 

5 Admiral, the most considerable ship of a fleet. ^ A soft clay. 



BOOK I.] PARADISE LOST. 31 

Nathless ^ he so endured, till on the beach 

Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called 300 

His legions, angel forms, who lay entranced 

Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks 

In Vallombrosa,- where the Etrurian shades 

High overarched embower; or scattered sedge ^ 

Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion* armed 305 

Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew 

Busiris-^ and his Memphian^ chivalry," 

While with perfidious ^ hatred they pursued 

The sojourners of Goshen,^ who beheld 

From the safe shore their floating carcasses 310 

And broken chariot wheels. So thick bestrown, 

Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood, 

Under amazement of their hideous change. 

He called so loud that all the hollow deep 

Of hell resounded : " Princes, Potentates, 315 

Warriors, the flower of heaven, once yours, now lost, 

If such astonishment as this can seize 

Eternal spirits ! Or have ye chosen this place 

After the toil of battle to repose 

1 A contraction in early English of " no-the-less," not the less. 

2 A shady valley some eighteen miles from Florence, which Milton doubt- 
less visited. Late travelers say that autumnal leaves from the chestnut for- 
ests cover and conceal the waters of the brooks. 

3 The Hebrew name" of the Red Sea is Sea of Sedge. 

4 A mighty hunter, who, according to Greek legend, was at his death 
placed among the stars. Storms were supposed to attend the rising and set- 
ting of his constellation. 

5 An Egyptian king, who, in Greek story, was said to sacrifice all strangers 
who came to Egypt. Hercules was his slayer. (See Exod. xiv.) 

6 Memphis, ten miles above the Pyramids, was the capital of Egypt in the 
first period of its history. 

'^ Cavalry; French, chevalerie, ^y^^'z/ia;/ (" horse "). 
8 Because, after letting the people go, the king pursued them. 
^ * In the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were" (Exod. 
ix. 26). 



32 MILTON, [BOOK I. 

Your wearied virtue,^ for the ease you find 320 

To slumber here, as in the vales of heaven ? 

Or in this abject posture have ye sworn 

To adore the Conqueror, who now beholds 

Cherub and seraph rolling in the flood 

With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon 325 

His swift pursuers from heaven gates discern 

The advantage, and, descending, tread us down 

Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts 

Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf ? 

Awake, arise, or be forever fallen ! " 330 

They heard, and were abashed, and up they sprung 
Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch, 
On duty sleeping found by whom they dread, 
Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake. 
Nor did they not perceive the evil phght 335 

In which they were, or the fierce pains not feel ; 
Yet to their General's voice they soon obeyed 
Innumerable. As when the potent rod 
Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day. 

Waved round the coast, up-called a pitchy cloud 340 

Of locusts, warping ^' on the eastern wind. 
That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung 
Like night, and darkened all the land of Nile;^ 
So numberless were those bad angels seen 

Hovering on wing under the cope ^ of hell, 345 

'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires ; 
Till, as a signal given, the uplifted spear 
Of their great Sultan waving to direct 
Their course, in even balance down they light 
On the firm brimstone, and fill all the plain : 350 

1 Valor, like the Latin virtus. 

2 Flying with a twisting to this side and that. 

3 See Exod. x. 15. 

* Dome, or vault. To it " coping" and " cap " are allied. 



BOOK I.]. PARADISE LOST. ZZ 

A multitude i like which the populous North • 

Poured never from her frozen loins to pass 

Rhene- or the Danaw,^ when her barbarous sons 

Came like a deluge on the South, and spread 

Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan* sands. 355 

Forthwith, from every squadron and each band, 

The heads and leaders thither haste where stood 

Their great Commander, — godlike shapes, and forms 

Excelling human ; princely dignities ; 

And powers that erst*^ in heaven sat on thrones, 360 

Though of their names in heavenly records now 

Be no memorial, blotted out and rased ^ 

By their rebelhon from the books of life.'^ 

Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve 

Got them new names, till, wandering o'er^the earth, 365 

Through God's high sufferance for the trial of man, 

By falsities and lies the greatest part 

Of mankind they corrupted to forsake 

God their Creator, and the invisible 

Glory of him that made them to transform 370 

Oft to the image of a brute, adorned 

With gay religions full of pomp and gold, 

And devils to adore for deities:^ 

Then were they known to men by various names. 

And various idols through the heathen world, 375 

Say, Muse, their names then known, who first, who last, 
Roused from the slumber on that fiery couch, 
At their great Emperor's call, as next in worth 

1 The Goths, Vandals, and Huns in the fifth century moved upon Greece, 
Italy, and Spain. In 429 Genseric led his Vandals from Spain to Africa. 

2 Latin Rheniis, Rhine. 3 German Donau, Danube. 
4 African. 5 Qnce ; formerly. 

fi Erased; canceled. '^ See Ps. ix. 5; Rev. iii. 5. 

8 See Lev. xvii. 7; Deut. xxxii. 17; 2 Chron. xi. 15; Ps. cvi. 37; i Cor. 
X. 20, 21. 

3 



34 MILTOX. [BOOK 1. 

Came singly where he stood on the bare strand, 

While the promiscuous crowd stood yet aloof. 380 

The chief were those who, from the pit of hell 
Roaming to seek their prey on earth, durst fix 
Their seats, long after, next the seat of God, 
Their altars by his altar, gods adored 

Among the nations round, and durst abide 385 

Jehovah thundering out of Sion, throned 
Between the cherubim ; ^ yea, often placed 
Within his sanctuary itself their shrines,- 
Abominations ; and with cursed things 

His holy rites and solemn feasts profaned, 390 

And with their darkness durst affront his light. 
First, Moloch^ horrid king, besmeared with blood 
Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears ; 
Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels loud. 
Their children's cries unheard that passed through fire 395 

To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite 
Worshiped in Rabba ^ and her watery plain, 
In Argob and in Basan,-^ to the stream 
Of utmost Arnon.*^ Nor content with such 

Audacious neighborhood, the wisest heart 400 

Of Solomon he led by fraud to build 

1 " O Lord God of Israel, which d\\ellest between the cherubim " (2 Kings 
xix. 15). The making of the figures is described in the building of Solo- 
mon's temple (see i Kings vi. 23-29). 

'^ Manasseh " set a carved image, the idol which he had made, in the 
house of God " (2 Chron. xxxiii. 7). 

3 Moloch was the fire god of the Ammonites. Tradition says the image 
was of brass. " The face was that of a calf, and his hands stretched forth 
like a man who opens his hands to receive something of his neighbor. And 
they kindled it with fire, and the priests took the babe, and put it in the hands 
of Moloch, and the babe gave up the ghost " (Smith's Dictionary of the 
Bible). 

4 The chief city of the Ammonites. 

5 Argob and Basan, countries lying east of the Jordan. 
^ A river running west, and faliinc; into the Dead Sea. 



BOOK I.] PARADISE LOST. 35 

His temple right agaiiisi. the temple of God 

On that opprobrious hiil,i and made his grove, 

The pleasant valley of Hinnom,- Tophet^ thence 

And black Gehenna called, the type of hell. 405 

Next Cheinos,^ the obscene dread of Moab's sons, 

From Aroer ^ to Nebo ^ and the wild 

Of southmost Abarim ; in Hesebon 

And Horonaim, Seon's realm, beyond 

The flowery dale of Sibma clad with vines, 410 

And Eleale to the Asphaltic Pool : "^ 

Peor his other name, when he enticed 

Israel in Sittim,^ on their march from Nile, 

To do him wanton rites, which cost them woe. 

Yet thence his lustful orgies ^ he enlarged 415 

Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove 

1 See 2 Kings xxiii. 13. " The licentious and cruel rites with which these 
divinities were worshiped gave a name of infamy to the whole mountain. In 
part, or in whole, it received from these shrines the name of the IMount of 
Offense, which it retained, together with the more innocent name of Olivet " 
(Stanley's Jewish Church). 

2 A ravine to the south and west of Jerusalem. After Josiah's zeal (see 
2 Kings xxiii.) it became a receptacle for the filth of the city, Gehenna, and 
a burning place for the bodies of malefactors. 

3 From the Hebrew toph, a drum, which was used, it is supposed, to 
drown the cries of the children. 

* A divinity essentially the same with the Moloch of the Ammonites. 

5 On the Arnon. 

6 One of the peaks of the Abarim range, twenty miles east of Jerusalem. 
■^ Hesebon, Sibma, and Eleale are supposed to be east of Abarim. 

"Therefore shall Moab howl for Moab. . . . For the fields of Heshbon 
languish, and the vine of Sibmah " (Isa. xvi. 7, 8). The site of Horonaim is 
not known. Seon was a king of the Ammonites. Asphaltic Pool, i.e., the 
Dead Sea, called " asphaltic " because of the asphalt or bitumen which is in its 
waters. 

«^ " And Israel abode in Shittim, and . . . joined himself unto Baal-peor : 
and the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel. . . . And those that 
died in the plague were twenty and four thousand" (Num. xxv. i, 3, 9). 

^ Revelries ; drunken sports. 



36 MILTON. [book I. 

Of Moloch homicide, lust hard by hate, 

Till good Josiah drove them thence to hell. 

With these came they who, from the bordering flood 

Of old Euphrates to that brook 1 that parts 420 

Egypt from Syrian ground, had general names 

Of Baalim and Asktaroth;- those male, 

These feminine. For spirits, when they please, 

Can either sex assume, or both : so soft 

And uncompounded is their essence pure, 425 

Not tied or manacled with joint or limb, 

Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones, 

Eike cumbrous flesh ; but, in what shape they choose, 

Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure, 

Can execute their aery purposes, 430 

And works of love or enmity fulfill. 

For those the race of Israel oft forsook 

Their living Strength, and unfrequented left 

His righteous altar, bowing lowly down 

To bestial gods; for which their heads, as low 435 

Bowed down in battle, sunk before the spear 

Of despicable foes. With these in troop 

Came Asforeth, whom the Phoenicians called 

Astarte, queen of heaven, with crescent horns ;^ 

To whose bright image nightly by the moon 440 

Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs ; 

In Sion also not unsung, where stood 

Her temple on the offensive mountain, built 

By that uxorious ^ king whose heart, though large, 

Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell 445 

^ The Besor. 

2 " Baalim " and " Ashtaroth " are plurals. Baalim, the sun gods of the 
Phoenicians and Canaanites, were worshiped with such rites as Moloch (see 
Jer. xix. 5). Ashtaroth were chief female divinities, reflections of the sun 
god, and therefore tlie moon. 

3 See Jcr. vii. 18. 4 Doting on his wives. 



BOOK I.] PARADISE LOST. 37 

To idols foul. Thar/uniiz^ came next behind, 

Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured 

I'he Syrian damsels to lament his fate 

In amorous ditties all a summer's day,'-^ 

While smooth Adonis from his native rock 450 

Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood 

Of Thammuz yearly wounded : the love tale 

Infected Sion's daughters with like heat, 

Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch 

Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led, 455 

His eye surv^eyed the dark idolatries 

Of alienated Judah. Next came one 

Who mourned in earnest, when the captive ark 

Maimed his brute image, head and hands lopt off, 

In his own temple, on the grunsel-edge,-' 460 

Where he fell flat and shamed his worshipers : ^ 

Dagon. his name, sea monster, r.pwaid man 

And downward fish ; yet had his temple high 

Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the coast 

Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon, 465 

And Accaron and Gaza's frontier bounds.-^ 

1 A Syrian god, who was supposed to be slain by a wild boar in Lebanon, 
and to revive every year. He is identified with the Greek Adonis, beloved 
of Aphrodite. " We came to a fair, large river," wrote the English traveler 
Maundrell, " doubtless the ancient river Adonis, which at certain seasons 
of the year, especially about the feast of Adonis, is of a bloody color, which 
the heathens looked upon as proceeding from a kind of sympathy in the river 
for the death of Adonis, wlio was killed by a wild boar in the mountains out 
of which this stream issues. Something like this we saw actually come to 
pass ; for the water M'as stained to a surprising redness, and, as we observed 
in traveling, had discolored the sea a great way into a reddish hue, occasioned, 
doubtless, by a sort of minium, or red earth, washed into the river by the 
violence of the rain." 

2 See Ezek. viii. 14. 3 Threshold; groundsill, 

4 See I Sam. v. 4. 

5 Milton names the five chief cities of the Philistines. " Azotus " is tlie 
Greek form of Ashdod ; "Ascalon," Ashkelon ; "Accaron," I'^kron, 



38 MILTOX. [BOOK I. 

Him followed Rimmo7i,^ whose delightful seat 

Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks 

Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams. 

He also against the house of God was bold: 470 

A leper - once he lost, and gained a king, 

Ahaz,'^ his sottish conqueror, whom he drew 

God's altar to disparage and displace 

For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn 

His odious offerings, and adore the gods 475 

Whom he had vanquished. After these appeared 

A crew who, under names of old renown, — 

Osi?is, /sis, On/s,'^ and their train, — 

With monstrous shapes and sorceries •'* abused 

Fanatic Egypt and her priests to seek 480 

Their wandering gods ^ disguised in brutish forms 

Rather than human. Nor did Israel scape 

The infection, when their borrowed gold composed 

The calf in Oreb ;" and the rebel ^ king 

Doubled that sin in Bethel and in Dan, 485 

Likening his Maker to the grazed ox, — 

Jehovah, who, in one night, when he passed 

From Egypt marching, equaled with one stroke 

Both her firstborn and all her bleating gods.^ 

1 A sun god worshiped at Damascus. 

2 See 2 Kings v. 12-15. ^ See 2 Chron. xxviii. 23. 

•* Osiris and Isis were the chief god and goddess of the Egyptians, and 
were, perliaps, personifications of the sun and moon. Horus was their son. 
It was the custom of the Egyptians to paint or to represent their gods with 
the heads of beast or bird, in order to come in closer influence with the bond 
people, who hekl to animal worship. 

5 Magic art ; witchcraft. 

6 A Greek tradition says that the gods, to escape from their enemies the 
giants, wandered in the form of animals. 

'^ See Exod. xii. 35 ; Ps. cvi. 19. 

8 Jeroboam rebelled against Rehoboam, the son of Solomon (see i Kings 
xii. 2S, 2q). 

^ See Exod. xii. 29. 



BOOK I.] PARADISE LOST. 39 

Belial^ came last ; than whom a spirit more lewd 490 

Fell not from heaven, or more gross to love 

Vice for itself. To him no temple stood 

Or altar smoked ; yet who more oft than he 

In temples and at altars, when the priest 

Turns atheist, as did Eli's sons, who filled 495 

With lust and violence the house of God ? 2 

In courts and palaces he also reigns. 

And in luxurious cities, where the noise 

Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers, 

And injury and outrage ; and, when night 500 

Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons 

Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine. 

Witness the streets of Sodom and that night 

In Gibeah, when the hospitable door 

Exposed a matron, to avoid worse rape.^ 505 

These were the prime in order and in might : 
The rest were long to tell ; though far renowned 
The Ionian ^ gods, of Javan's - issue held 
Gods, yet confessed later than Heaven and Earth, 
Their boasted parents; Titan, Heaven's firstborn, 510 

With his enormous brood, and birthright seized 
By younger Saturn; he from mightier Jove, 
His own and Rhea's son, like measure found ; 
So Jove usurping reigned.*^ These, first in Crete '^ 

\ 
1 A Hebrew word meaning "worthless, lawless." It is used here, as in 
2 Cor. vi. 15, as a personification of evil and wickedness. 
- See r Sam. ii. 12. 

3 Milton refers to the stories of Lot and the angels in Gen. xix., and the 
concubine in Gibeah in Judg. xix. 

4 Used here for **' Greek," a part of which people were lonians. 

5 A son of Japheth, and grandson of Noah. 

6 Of the twelve Titans, children of Heaven and Earth, Oceanus the eldest 
would have succeeded his father; but his youngest brother, Saturn, obtained 
the sovereignty. He, in turn, was dethroned by Zeus or Jupiter. 

"^ Candia. 



40 MTLTON. [iJOOK i. 

And Ida"" known, thence on die snowy top 515 

Of cold Olympus - ruled the middle air, 

Their highest heaven ; or on the Delphian cliff,^ 

Or in Dodona,-* and through all the bounds 

Of Doric land ;5 or who with Saturn old 

Fled over Adria to the Hesperian fields, 520 

And o'er the Celtic ^ roamed the utmost isles.*^ 

All these and more came flocking ; but with looks 
Downcast and damp ; yet such wherein appeared 
Obscure some glimpse of joy to have fotmd their chief 
Not in despair, to have found themselves not lost 525 

In loss itself ; which on his countenance cast 
Like doubtful hue. But he, his wonted pride 
Soon recollecting, with high words, that bore 
Semblance of worth, not substance, gently raised 
Their fainting courage, and dispelled their fears ; 530 

Then straight commands that, at the warlike sound 
Of trumpets loud and clarions,^ be upreared 
His mighty standard. That proud honor claimed 
Azazel^ as his right, a cherub tall ; 
Who forthwith from the glittering staff unfurled 535 

1 A mountain of Crete, the birthplace of Jupiter, and sacred to him. 

2 A mountain of Thessaly, the top of which was above cloud line. Its 
inaccessibility touched the imagination of the early Greeks, and they made it 
the home of their gods. 

3 The famous oracle of Apollo was on a steep declivity of Parnassus in 
Phocis. The site of the temple is rich in archaeological remains ; and the 
French Government is now engaged in excavations there, 

4 An oracle of Zeus or Jupiter, in a grove of sacred oaks in Epirus. 

5 " Doric land," i.e., Greece. The Dorians and lonians were the chief 
Greek people in historic times. Saturn fled over the Adriatic (Adria) to Italy 
(Hesperian, i.e., western fields) before the power of Zeus. 

6 " Celtic" fields, i.e., France. 

7 " Utmost isles," i.e., British Isles, ultima Thnle. • 

8 A clarion is a small, high-pitched trumpet. 

9 This word is interpreted variously; as, " brave in retreat," "powerful 
against God," and " scapegoat." 



BOOK I.] PARADISE LOST. 41 

The imperial ensign, which, full high advanced, 

Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind, 

With gems and golden luster rich emblazed,^ 

Seraphic arms - and trophies ; all the while 

Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds : 540 

At which the universal host upsent 

A shout that tore hell's concave, and beyond 

Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. 

All in a moment through the gloom were seen 

Ten thousand banners rise into the air, 545 

With orient^ colors waving: with them rose 

A forest huge of spears ; and thronging helms 

Appeared, and serried shields in thick array 

Of depth immeasurable. Anon they move 

In perfect phalanx •* to the Dorian mood ^ 550 

Of flutes and soft recorders ;^ such as raised 

To higlith of noble.st temper heroes old 

Arming to battle, and instead of rage 

Deliberate valor breathed," firm, and unmoved 

With dread of death to flight or foul retreat; 555 

Nor wanting power to mitigate and sw^age ^ 

With solenm touches troubled thoughts, and chase 

Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and pain 

From mortal or immortal minds. Thus they. 

Breathing united force ^ with fixed thought, 560 

Moved on in silence to soft pipes that charmed 

1 Emblazoned. 2 Heraldic devices borne on a shield. 

3 Bright ; the color of the dawning sun. 

4 A body of heavy armed troops arranged in a solid block. The arrange- 
ment was devised and named by the Greeks. 

5 " Dorian mood," i.e., the severe, grave style of music of the Greeks. 
The Spartans went to battle " slowly, to the music of many flute players." 

6 Flageolets. "7 Inspired. 8 Soothe ; make quiet. 

9 " Breathing united force," an Homeric phrase, suggesting that the host 
showed their valor and strength, and fixedness of purpose, by their manner 
of breathing. 



42 MILTON. [BOOK I. 

Their painful steps o'er the burnt soil. And now 

Advanced in view they stand, a horrid ^ front 

Of dreadful length and dazzling arms, in guise 

Of warriors old, with ordered spear and shield, 565 

Awaiting what command their mighty chief 

Had to impose. He through the armed files 

Darts his experienced eye, and soon traverse 

The whole battalion views, — their order due, 

Their visages and stature as of gods; 570 

Their number last he sums. And now his heart 

Distends with pride, and, hardening in his strength. 

Glories : for never, since created man. 

Met such embodied force as, named with these. 

Could merit more than that smah infantry 575 

Warred on by cranes;- though all the giant brood ^ 

Of Phlegra with the heroic race ^ were joined 

That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each side 

Mixed with auxiliar gods;'' and what resounds 

In fable or romance of Uther's son,^ 580 

Begirt with British and Armoric ' knights ; 

^ Bristling; Latin, /lorridi/s. 

2 The legend of the warring of cranes and pygmies every springtime is re- 
ferred to by Homer in the Iliad, III. 3-6. The Greek word irvyuij measures 
the length from the elbow to the knuckles. 

^ The giants who warred with Zeus fought at Phlegra, Macedonia. 

4 " Heroic race," i.e., the warriors of whom Homer tells, who fought tlie 
ten-years' war about Troy or Ilium ; those whom Sophocles celebrates in his 
plays, CEdipus Rex, Antigone, Electra, and ^schylus in the Seven against 
Thebes. 

5 "Auxiliar gods," i.e., the gods who took sides and fought with their 
favorites in the war about Troy. 

<^ " Utlier's son," i.e., King Arthur, whose deeds are told in the Morte 
d'Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory and in Tennyson's Idylls of the King. For 
many years Milton himself purposed to make them the subject of an epic, 
but finally laid them aside to sing of " man's first disobedience." 

"^ Breton. Arthur was represented as in alliance with the knights of 
Brittany, and holding them at his Round Table. 



BOOK I.] PARADISE LOST. 43 

And all who since, baptized or infidel, 

Jousted^ in Aspramont, or Montalban, 

Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond,^ 

Or whom Biserta ^ sent from Afric shore 585 

When Chariemain '^ with all his peerage fell 

By Fontarabbia. Thus far these beyond 

Compare of mortal prowess, yet observed 

Their dread commander. He, above the rest 

In shape and gesture proudly eminent, 590 

Stood like a tower. His form '^ had yet not lost 

All her original brightness, nor appeared 

Less than arcliangel ruined, and the excess 

Of glory obscured : as when the sun new risen 

Looks through the horizontal misty air 595 

Shorn of his beams, or, from behind the moon, 

In dim eclipse, disastrous^ twilight sheds 

On half the nations, and with fear of change 

Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet shone 

Above them all the archangel: but his face 600 

Deep scars of thunder had intrenched," and care 

Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows 

Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride 

1 Engaged in a military contest, tilt, or tournament. From this word 
comes our word " jostle." 

2 Milton suggests that the tournaments or wars between Christian (bap- 
tized) and Mohammedan (infidel) were held in Aspramont in the Nether- 
lands, Montalban on the borders of tianguedoc, Damascus in Syria, Morocco 
in northern Africa, Trebisond on the Black Sea. 

3 Ancient Utica, near Carthage, from which the Saracens set sail for 
Spain. 

4 Charlemagne's army was defeated at Roncesvalles, near Fontarabbia, in 
778 ; but he himself survived. 

5 *' Form " is treated as if it were a feminine noun, like the Latin foi^nia. 

6 It was the old faith that eclipses foretold calamities. The word is from 
dis (" evil ") and astn/m (" star "), ill-starred. 

"' Furrowed; cut deep. 



44 MILTOX. [BOOK I. 

Waiting revenge. Cruel his eye, but cast 

Signs of remorse and passion, ' to behold 605 

The fellows of his crime, the followers rather 

(Far other once beheld in bhss), condemned 

Forever now to have their lot in pain, — 

Minions of spirits for his fault amerced - 

Of Heaven, and from eternal splendors flung 610 

For his revolt, — yet faithful hov*^ they stood, 

Their glory withered ; as, when heaven's lire 

Hath scathed '•' the forest oaks or mountain pines. 

With singed top their stately growth, though bare, 

Stands on the blasted heath. He now prepared 615 

To speak ; whereat their doubled ranks they bend 

From wing to wing, and half inclose him round "^ 

With all his peers : attention held them mute. 

Thrice he assayed, and thrice, in spite of scorn,-'' 

Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth : at last 620 

Words interwove ^ with sighs found out their way -. — 

" O myriads of immortal spirits ! O powers 
Matchless, but with the Almighty ! and that strife 
AVas not inglorious, though the event was dire. 
As this place testifies, and this dire change, 625 

Hateful to utter. But what power of mind. 
Foreseeing or presaging, from the depth 
Of knowledge past or present, could have feared 
How such united force of gods, how such 

As stood like these, could ever know repulse ? 630 

For who can yet believe, though after loss, 
That all these puissant legions, whose exile 

1 Suffering. 

2 Punished by the penalty of loss. 

3 Hurt; blighted. 

4 From the phalanx they formed a semicircle. 

5 " In spite of scorn," i.e., in spite of his scorning to ^^'eep. 

6 Another form of the past participle " interwoven." 



BOOK I.] PARADISE LOST. 45 

Hath emptied "^ heaven, shall fail to reascend, 

Self -raised, and repossess their native seat ? 

For me, be witness all the host of heaven, 635 

If counsels different,^ or dangers shunned 

By me have lost our hopes. But he who reigns 

Monarch in heaven till then as one secure 

Sat on his throne, upheld by old repute. 

Consent, or custom, and his regal state 640 

Put forth at full, but still his strength concealed, 

Which tempted our attempt," and wTOught our fall. 

Henceforth his might we know, and know our own. 

So as not either to provoke, or dread 

New war provoked : our better part remains 645 

To work in close design, by fraud or guile. 

What force effected not ; that he no less 

At length from us may find, who overcomes 

By force hath overcome but half his foe. 

Space may produce new worlds ; whereof so rife 650 

There went a fame* in heaven, that he ere long 

Intended to create, and therein plant 

A generation whom his clioice regard 

Should favor equal to the sons of heaven. 

Thither, if but to pry, shah be perhaps • 655 

Our first eruption,-'' thither, or elsewhere ; 

For this infernal pit shall never hold 

Celestial spirits in bondage, nor the abyss 

Long under darkness cover. But these thoughts 

Full counsel must mature. Peace is despaired ; 660 

1 A purposed exaggeration. The belief that a third of the angels fell is 
founded on the sentence in Rev. xii. 4: "And his tail drew the third part of 
the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth." 

2 " Counsels difTerent," i.e., divided counsels. 

3 "Tempted our attempt." Such jingles have been looked upon as de- 
fects in Milton's style. 

4 A current rumor. 5 Breakina; out. 



46 MILTOiW [BOOK I. 

For who can think submission ? War, then war 
Open or understood, ^ must be resolved." 

He spake ; and to confirm his words out flew 
Milhons of flaming swords, drawn from the thighs 
Of mighty cherubim : the sudden blaze 665 

Far round illumined hell. Highly they raged 
Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped arms 
Clashed on then' sounding shields the din of war,- 
Hurling defiance toward the vault of heaven. 

There stood a hill not far, wdiose grisly top 670 

Belched fire and rolling smoke : the rest entire '^ 
Shone with a glossy scurf, undoubted sign 
That in his womb ^ was hid metallic ore. 
The work of sulphur. Thither, winged with speed, 
A numerous brigade hastened; as when bands 675 

Of pioneers,-^ with spade and pickax armed, 
Forerun the royal camp, to trench a field, 
Or cast a rampart. Mammon ^ led them on, 
Mammon, the least erected ' spirit that fell 

From heaven ; for even in heaven his looks and thoughts 680 
Were always downward bent, admiring more 
The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold, 
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed 
In vision beatific.^ By him first 

1 Secret ; not openly declared. 

2 In this manner the Roman soldiers applauded the speeches of their gen- 
erals, and showed their ardor for battle. 

3 " The rest entire," i.e., all the rest. 

4 Interior. It was believed in Milton's time that metals were composed 
of mercury as a metallic base, and sulphur as a cement. 

5 Foot soldiers who march before an army, and prepare the way. 

6 A Syriac word for " wealth," which is personified in Matt. vi. 24: "Ye 
cannot serve God and mammon." 

"^ " Least erected," i.e., least upright; least high-minded. 
8 "Vision beatific," i.e., the direct sight of the glory of God, which 
blessed and filled with joy the heavenly hosts. The phrase was used by the 



BOOK I.] PARADISE LOST. 47 

Men also, and by his suggestion taught, 685 

Ransacked the center,^ and with impious hands 

Rifled tlie boM^els of their mother earth 

For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew 

Opened into the hill a spacious wound. 

And digged out ribs of gold. Let none admire 2 690 

That riches grow in hell ; that soil may best 

Deserve the precious bane. And here let those 

Who boast in mortal things, and wondering tell 

Of Babel ^ and the works of Memphian kings,^ 

Learn how their greatest monuments of fame, 695 

And strength, and art, are easily outdone 

By spirits reprobate, and in an hour 

What in an age they, with incessant toil 

And hands innumerable, scarce perform. 

Nigh on the plain, in many cells prepared, 700 

That underneath had veins of liquid fire 

Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude 

With wondrous art founded ^ the massy ore, 

Severing each kind, and scummed the bullion dross.^ 

A third as soon had formed within the ground 705 

A various" mold, and from the boihng cells 

schoolmen ; and the sight was said to have been enjoyed by such saints as 
Francis d'Assissi and Catherine of Siena while in the flesh. 

1 Of the world, the earth, according to Milton's system. 

2 In the old sense of " wonder." 

3 Babylon, which contained the Temple of Belus, hanging gardens, and 
vast pools and walls. 

4 In the making of the Great Pyramid, near Memphis, a hundred thou- 
sand men are said to have been employed twenty years. The stones of which 
it is built were brought from the Arabian mountains, and no one is less than 
thirty feet long. It covers an area of thirteen acres. (See lines 699 and 718.) 

° Melted, as in a foundry. 

^ " Bullion dross," i.e., the dross that rose to the surface in the boiling 
(bullion, French, bouillir, " to boil") fluid of the crucible. 
■^ Wrought in different and many forms. 



48 MILTOX. [BOOK I. 

By strange conveyance filled each hollow nook ; 

As in an organ, from one blast of wind, 

To many a row of pipes the sound-board ^ breathes. 

Anon out of the earth a fabric huge 710 

Rose hke an exhalation, with the sound 2 

Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet, 

Built like a temple, where pilasters "^ round 

Were set, and Doric ^ pillars overlaid 

With golden architrave ;^ nor did there want 7 1 5 

Cornice <^ or frieze, wath bossy'' sculptures graven: 

The roof was fretted ^ gold. Not Babylon 

Nor great Alcairo ^ such magnificence 

Equaled in all their glories, to enshrine 

Belus or Serapis,!*^ their gods, or seat 720 

Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove 

In wealth and luxury. The ascending pile 

Stood fixed her stately highth ; and straight the doors, 

Opening their brazen folds, discover, wide 

Within, her ample spaces o'er the smooth 725 

And level pavement : from the arched roof, 

Pendent by subtle magic, many a row 

1 The upper part of the wind chest, which conveys the wind to the rows 
of pipes through grooves. Playing the organ was one of the delights which 
Milton did not scorn in his laborious days. 

2 At a mask acted at Whitehall in 1637, " In the further part of the scene, 
the earth opened ; and there rose up a richly adorned palace, seeming all of 
goldsmith's work." One of Milton's editors supposes the hint of the rising 
of Pandemonium to have been taken from this scene. 

3 Square pillars, projecting from a wall a third or a quarter of their 
breadth, were set round the temple. 

4 The Doric was the plainest of the Greek orders of architecture. 

5 The main beam resting on the pillars. 

6 The ledge or projection above the frieze, which is, in turn, a flat surface 
above the architrave. 

'^ Boldly prominent ; projecting. ^ Interlacing in ornament. 

9 The Cairo ; al being the Arabic definite article. 

10 An Egyptian god personifying the Nile and its fertility. 



BOOK I.] PARADISE LOST. ^ 49 

Of Starry lamps and blazing cressets,^ fed 

With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light 

As from a sky. The hasty multitude 730 

Admiring entered ; and the work some praise, 

And some the architect. His hand was known 

In heaven by many a towered structure high, 

Where sceptered angels held their residence, 

And sat as princes, whom the supreme King '735 

Exalted to such power, and gave to rule. 

Each in his hierarchy, the orders bright. 

Nor was his name unheard or unadored 

In ancient Geece ; and in Ausonian ^ land 

Men called him Mulciber;^ and how he fell 740 

From heaven they fabled, thrown by angry Jove * 

Sheer o'er the crystal battlements : from morn 

To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, 

A summer's day, and with the setting sun 

Uropt from the zenith, like a falling star,^ 745 

On Lemnos, the yEgsean isle. Thus they relate, 

Erring ; for he with this rebellious rout 

Fell long before ; nor aught availed him now 

To have built in heaven high towers ; nor did he scape 

By all his engines,^ but was headlong sent, 750 

With his industrious crew, to build in hell. 

Meanwhile the winged haralds,'' by command 
Of sovran power, with awful ceremony 
And trumpet's sound, throughout the host proclaim 

1 Iron cups or baskets in which such substances as tarred ropes are burned 
for beacons. 2 Italian. 

3 The softener of hard metals ; from the Latin, mulcere. The Latins also 
called him Vulcan ; the Greeks, Hephaistos. 

4 " Angry Jove," because Hephaistos, or Vulcan, had taken the part of 
Hera, his mother, in her quarrel with Zeus. 

» " He seized me by my foot, and cast me from the heavenly threshold : all 
day I fell, and with the set of sun lighted on Lemnos " (Iliad, I. 592). 
6 Contrivances. '^ Milton's spelling for " heralds." 

4 



50 ^ MILTON. [BOOK I. 

A solemn council forthwith to be held 755 

At Pandemonium,^ the high capital 

Of Satan and his peers. Their summons called 

From every band and squared regiment '^ 

By place or choice the worthiest : tliey anon 

With hundreds and with thousands trooping came 760 

Attended. All access was thronged ; the gates 

And porches wide, but chief the spacious hall 

(Though like a covered field, ^ where champions bold 

Wont 4 ride in armed, and at the Soldan's^ chair 

Defied the best of Panim ^ chivalry 765 

To mortal combat, or career with lance "') 

Thick swarmed, both on .the ground and in the air, 

Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees 

In springtime, w^hen the Sun with Taurus rides,^ 

Pour forth their populous youth about the hive 770 

In clusters ; they among fresh dews and flowers 

Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank, 

The suburb of their straws-built citadel, 

New rubbed wnth balm, expatiate,^ and confer ^^ 

Their state affairs: so thick the aery ^^ crowd 775 

Swarmed and were straitened ;^- till, the signal given, 

Behold a wonder ! They but now^ who seemed 

In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons, 

Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room 

1 From the Greek, Tcav (" all ") and 6ai^iijv (" demon "). Milton formed 
the word on the model of Pantheon, the temple in Rome built to all gods. 

2 " Squared regiment," i.e., squadron. 

3 " Like a covered field," i.e., like some covered field. 

* Were wont : accustomed. ^ Sultan's. ^ Pagan. 

"^ Two sorts of jousting are meant ; the second merely a measuring of lances. 

8 Taurus is one of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. The sun was supposed 
to drive his chariot through that constellation, beginning a little after the 
vernal equinox. 

^ Walk out ; move at large. "^^ Confer of ; discuss. 

11 Phantom. l- Narrowed ; confined. 



BOOK 1.] PARADISE LOST, 51 

Throng numberless, like that pygmean race 780 

Beyond the Indian mount;' or faery elves, 

Whose midnight revels, by a forest side 

Or fountain, some belated peasant sees. 

Or dreams he sees, while overhead the moon 

Sits arbitress,- and nearer to the earth -^ 785 

Wheels her pale course : they, on their mirth and dance 

Intent, with jocund music charm his ear ; 

At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds. 

Thus incorporeal spirits to smallest forms 

Reduced their shapes immense, and were at large, 790 

Though without number still, amidst the hall 

Of that infernal court. But far wnthin. 

And in their own dimensions like themselves, 

The great seraphic lords and cherubim 

In close recess^ and secret conclave^ sat, 795 

A thousand demigods on golden seats, 

Frequent^ and fullJ After short silence then. 

And summons ^ read, the great consult *^ began. 

1 Milton supposes the home of the pygmies to be the Himalayas. 

2 Spectator ; witness. 

3 " Nearer to the earth," because attracted by enchantments. It is an old 
superstition that fairies and witches can change the course of the moon. 

4 Retirement. 

5 Private meeting. The word is especially used to mean the assembly or 
meeting of the cardinals for the election of a pope. 

6 Numerous. "^ Filled. 

8 At the opening of each session of the English Parliament, the speech from 
the throne declares the causes for whicl>4he members are summoned. This 
usage Milton doubtless had in mind. 

9 Consultation. 



BOOK II. 



THE ARGUMENT. 



The consultation begun, Satan debates whether another battle be to be hazarded for the 
recovery of heaven: some advise it, others dissuade. A third proposal is preferred, men- 
tioned before by Satan, — to search the truth of that prophecy or tradition in heaven concern- 
ing another world, and another kind of creature, equal, or not much inferior, to themselves, 
about this time to be created. Their doubt who shall be sent on this difficult search : Satan, 
their chief, undertakes alone the voyage ; is honored and applauded. The council thus ended, 
the rest betake them several ways and to several employments, as their inclinations lead them, 
to entertain the time till Satan return. He passes on his journey to hell gates ; finds them 
shut, and who sat there to guard them; by whom at length they are opened, and discover to 
him the great gulf between hell and heaven. With what difficulty he passes through, 
directed by Chaos, the Power of that place, to the sight of this new world which he sought. 

High on a throne of royal state, which far 

Outshone the wealth of Ormiis i and of Ind,2 

Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand 

Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,'"^ 

Satan exalted sat, by merit raised 5 

To that bad eminence ; and, from despair 

Tluis high uplifted beyond hope, aspires 

Beyond thus high,^ insatiate to pursue 

1 Ormus, or Hormuz, a city, upon an island of the same name, at the mouth 
of the Persian Gulf, which during the fifteenth century was the mart of the 
commerce between India and Persia. Its weakh and splendor excited the 
cupidity of the Portuguese, who after a long siege razed it. 

2 The accretion of the labor of the people in the hands of a few rulers, and 
the output of the diamond mines and gold washings of India, made it formerly 
a favorite simile of wealth. It was not a rich country in reality, for the 
mass of the people were miserably poor and oppressed. 

3 It is said that a part of the coronation ceremony among the Persians was 
the scattering of gold and precious stones over the head of the king. 

4 " Beyond thus high," i.e., beyond this height. 



BOOK II.] PARADISE LOST. 53 

Vain war with heaven ; and, by success ^ untaught, 

His proud imaginations thus displayed: — lo 

" Powers and Dominions, Deities of heaven, 
For since no deep within her gulf can hold 
Immortal vigor, though oppressed and fallen, 
I give not heaven for lost : from this descent 
Celestial virtues rising will appear 15 

More glorious and more dread than from no fall. 
And trust themselves to fear no second fate. 
Me 2 though just right, and the fixed laws of heaven, 
Did first create your leader — next, free choice. 
With what besides in council or in fight 20 

Hath been achieved of merit — yet this loss. 
Thus far at least recovered, hath much more 
Established in a safe, unenvied throne, 
Yielded with full consent. The happier state 
In heaven, which follows dignity, might draw 25 

Envy from each inferior ; but who here 
Will envy whom the highest place exposes 
Foremost to stand against the Thunderer's aim 
Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest share 
Of endless pain ? Where there is, then, no good 30 

For which to strive, no strife can -grow up there 
From faction : for none sure will claim in hell 
Precedence ; none wdiose portion is so small 
Of present pain that with ambitious mind 

Will covet more ! With this advantage, then, 35 

To union and firm faith, and firm^ccord, 
More than can be in heaven, we now return 
To claim our just inheritance of old. 
Surer to prosper than prosperity 
Could have assured us ; and by what best way, 40 

1 " Success" means here event, result. In modern English we use the 
word only for good event. 

2 " Me" is placed first for emphasis. 



54 MILTON. [BOOK II. 

^Vllet}ler of open war or covert guile, 

We now debate. Who can advise may speak." ^ 

He ceased ; and next him Moloch, sceptered king,- 
Stood up, the strongest and the fiercest spirit 
That fought in heaven, now fiercer by despair. 45 

His trust was with tlie Eternal to be deemed 
Equal in strength, and rather than be less 
Cared not to be at all ; with that care lost 
Went all his fear: of God, or hell, or worse. 
He recked-^ not, and tliese words thereafter spake:— 50 

" My sentence'^ is for open war. Of wiles, 
More unexpert, I boast not : them let those 
Contrive vvho need, or when they need ; not now. ^ 

For, while they sit contriving, sliall the rest — 
Milhons that stand in arms, and longing wait 55 

Tlie signal to ascend — sit lingering here. 
Heaven's fugitives, and for their dweUing place 
Accept this dark, opprobrious den of shame, 
The prison of his tyranny who reigns 

By our delay ? No ! let us rather choose, 60 

Armed with hell flames and fury, all at once 
O'er heaven's high towers to force resistless way, 
Turning our tortures '' into horrid arms 
Against the Torturer ; when, to meet the noise 
Of his almighty engine,^' he shall hear 65 

Infernal thunder, and, for lightning, see 



1 " There is a decided, manly tone in the arguments and sentiments, an 
eloquent dogmatism, as if each person spoke from thorough conviction ; an 
excellence v/hich Milton probably borrowed from his spirit of partisanship, 
or else his partisanship from the natural firmness and vigor of his mind " 
(Hazlitt). 

2 " Scepter-bearing king" is an Homeric expression. 

3 Cared; reckoned. 4 Opinion; decision. 

5 Named in Book I., line 61, also in lines 67 and 69. 

6 Any instrumentality to effect a purpose : Iiere it may be artillery. 



BOOK II.] PARADISE LOST. 55 

Black 1 fire and horror shot with equal rage 

Among his angels, and his throne itself 

Mixed - with Tartarean '^ sulphur and strange fire, 

His own invented torments. But perhaps 70 

The way seems difficult, and steep to scale 

With upright wing ^ against a higher foe. 

Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench -■' 

Of that forgetful ^ lake benumb not still, 

That in our proper motion we ascend 75 

Up to our native seat ; descent and fall 

To us is adverse. Who but felt of late, 

When the fierce foe hung on our broken rear 

Insulting, and pursued us through the deep, 

With what compulsion and laborious flight 80 

We sunk thus low ? The ascent is easy, then ; 

The event is feared. Should we again provoke 

Our stronger, some worse way his wrath may find 

To our destruction, if there be in hell 

Fear to be worse destroyed. What can be worse 85 

Than to dwell here, driven out from bhss, condemned 

In this abhorred deep to utter woe ; 

Where pain of unextinguishable fire 

Must exercise " us without hope of end, 

The vassals of his anger, when the scourge 90 

Inexorably, and the torturing hour, 

Calls us to penance ? More destroyed than thus, 

We should be quite abolished, and expire. 

What fear we, then ? what doubt we to incense 

His utmost ire ? which, to the highth enraged, 95 

1 Smoky ; sooty ; not glowing. 2 Filled with ; enveloped in. 

3 Tartarus, in classical mythology, was the place of punishment and 
torment. 

4 " Upright wing," i.e., upward-striving wing. ^ A. large draught. 
6 Causing forgetfulness. Like " oblivious," Book I. 266. 

'^ Discipline ; torment. 



56 MILl'OK. [HOOK 11. 

Will either quite consume us, and reduce 

To nothing this essentiaP — happier far 

Than miserable to have eternal being ! 

Or, if our substance be indeed divine, 

And cannot cease to be, we are at worst 2 100 

On this side nothing ; and by proof we feel 

Our power sufficient to disturb his heaven, 

And with perpetual inroads to alarm. 

Though inaccessible, his fatal ^ throne : 

Which, if not victory, is yet revenge." 105 

He ended frowning, and his look denounced* 
Desperate revenge, and battle dangerous 
To less than gods. On the other side up rose 
Belial, in act more graceful and humane. 

A fairer person lost not heaven ; he seemed no 

For dignity composed, and high exploit. 
But all was false and hollow, though his tongue 
Dropt manna,^ and could make the worse appear 
The better reason,^ to perplex and dash 

Maturest counsels : for his thoughts were low ; 115 

To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds 
Timorous and slothful. Yet he pleased the ear, 
And with persuasive accent thus began: — 

" I should be much for open war, O Peers, 
As not behind in hate, if what was urged 120 

Main reason to persuade immediate war 
Did not dissuade me most, and seem to cast 
Ominous conjecture on the whole success ; 
When he who most excels in fact of arms,'' 

1 Essence. Milton frequently used the adjective for the noun. 

2 We are on this side nothing at worst. 

3 Upheld by fate. 4 Declared ; proclaimed. 

5 " The taste of it was like wafers made with honey" (Exod. xvi. 31). 

6 "The worse appear the better reason." The phrase Socrates used in 
describing the reasoning of the sophists (see Plato's Apology). 

'i " In fact of arms," i.e., in feat of arms; in warlike strength. 



IJOOK II.] PARADISE LOST. 57 

In what he counsels and in what excels 125 

Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair 

And utter dissolution, as the scope ^ 

Of all his aim, after some dire revenge. 

First, what revenge ? The towers of heaven are filled 

With armed watch, that render all access 130 

Impregnable : oft on the bordering deep - 

Encamp their legions, or with obscure ^ wing 

Scout far and wide into the realm of night, 

Scorning surprise. Or, could we break our way 

By force, and at our heels all hell should rise 135 

With blackest insurrection to confound 

Heaven's purest light, yet our great enemy, 

All incorruptible, would on his throne 

Sit unpolluted, and the ethereal mold,^ 

Incapable of stain, would soon expel 140 

Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire. 

Victorious. Thus repulsed, our final hope 

Is flat despair : we must exasperate 

The Almighty Victor to spend all his rage ; 

And that must end us ; that must be our cure, — 145 

To be no more. Sad cure ! for who would lose, 

Though full of pain, this intellectual being, 

Those thoughts that wander through eternity, 

To perish rather, swallowed up and lost 

In the wide womb of uncreated night, 150 

Devoid of sense and motion ? ^ And who knows, 

/ 
1 End ; purpose ; intention. " Chaos. 

3 The wings would become obscure through tlie darkness of the realm of 
night. 

4 Form ; shape ; cast ; character. 

5 This feeling passage upon the joys of thought and speculation may have 
been induced by Milton's blindness. In his youth he confessed the charms of 
divine philosophy ; but in his later years, after he had embraced the austeri- 
ties of the Puritanic faith, he looked upon the study of abstruse questions as 
inimical to and subversive of what he deemed divine truth. 



5^ MILTON. [BO..K II. 

Let this be good, whether our angry foe 

Can ^\wQ it, or will ever ? How he can 

Is doubtful : that he never will is sure. 

Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire, 155 

Belike 1 through impotence ^ or unaware, 

To give his enemies their wish, and end 

Them in his anger whom his anger saves 

To punish endless ? ^ ' Wherefore cease we, then ? ' 

Say they who counsel war; 'we are decreed, 160 

Reserved, and destined to eternal woe ; 

Wliatever doing, what can we suffer more, 

AVhat can we suffer worse ? ' Is this, then, worst, — 

Thus sitting, thus consulting, thus in arms ? 

Wliat when we fled amain,-^ pursued and strook ^ 165 

With heaven's afflicting thunder, and besought 

The deep to shelter us ? This hell then seemed 

A refuge from those wounds. Or when we lay 

Chained on the burning lake ? ^ That sure was worse. 

What if the breath that kindled those grim fires, 170 

Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold rage. 

And plunge us in the flames ; or from above 

Should intermitted vengeance arm again 

His red right hand to plague us ? What if all 

Her stores were opened, and 'this firmament 175 

Of hell should spout her cataracts of fire, 

Impendent" horrors, threatening hideous fall 

One day upon our heads; while we, perhaps, 

Designing or exhorting glorious war. 

Caught in a fiery tempest, shall be hurled, 180 

1 Perhaps ; probably ; maybe. 2 Lack of self-control. 

3 Eternally, an adjective used as an adverb. 4 With our might. 

5 An old form of " struck." 

6 " For Tophet is ordained of old; . . . the breath of the Lord, like a 
stream of brimstone, doth kindle it " (Isa. xxx. t,i). 

" Impending; threatening. 



BOOK II.] PARA DISK LOST. 59 

Each on his rock transfixed, the sport and prey 

Of racking^ whndwinds, or forever sunk 

Under yon boihng ocean, wrapt in chains, 

There to converse with everhisting groans, 

Unrespited,- unpitied, unreprieved,-^ 185 

Ages of hopeless end ? This would be worse. 

\Var, therefore, open or concealed, alike 

My voice dissuades ; for what can force or guile 

With him, or who deceive his mind, whose eye 

Views all things at one view ? He from heaven's highth 190 

All these our motions vain sees and derides,'^ 

Not more almighty to resist our might 

Than wise to frustrate all our plots and wiles. 

Shall we, then, li\'e, thus vile — the race of heaven 

Thus trampled, thus expelled, to suffer here 195 

Chains and these torments ? Better these than worse, 

By my advice; since fate inevitable 

Subdues us, and omnipotent decree. 

The victor's will. To suffer, as to do,^ 

Our strength is equal ; nor the law unjust 200 

That so ordains. This was at first resolved, 

If W'C were v.-ise, against so great a foe 

Contending, and so doubtful what might fall. 

1 laugh when those who at the spear are bold 

And venturous, if that fail them, shrink, and fear 205 

What yet they know must follow^ — to endure 

Exile, or ignominy, or bonds, or pain. 

The sentence of their conqueror. This is now 

Our doom ; which if w^e can sustain aiid bear,- 

Our supreme foe in time may much remit 210 

His anger, and perhaps, thus far removed, 

1 Rushing; driving. 

2 Admitting no pause. ^ Admitting no postponement of sentence. 

■i " He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh : the Lord shall have them in 
derision" (Ps. ii. 4). 5 gee Book I. 158. 



6o MILTOX. [BOOK II.- 

Not mind us not offending, satisfied 

With what is punished ;i whence these raging fires 

Will slacken, if his breath stir not their flames. 

Our purer essence then will overcome 215 

Their noxious vapor;- or, inured, not feel; 

Or, changed at length, and to the place conformed 

In temper and in nature, will receive 

Familiar the fierce heat ; and, void of pain. 

This horror will grow mild, this darkness hght ; 220 

Besides what hope the never-ending flight 

Of future days may bring, what chance, what change 

Worth waiting'^ — since our present lot appears 

For happy though but ill, for ill not worst,-* 

If we procure not to ourselves more woe." 225 

Thus Belial, with words clothed in reason's garb, 
Counseled ignoble ease and peaceful sloth. 
Not peace ; and after him thus Mammon spake : — 

" Either to disenthrone the King of heaven 
We war, if war be best, or to regain 230 

Our own right lost. Him to unthrone we then 
May hope, when everlasting Fate shall yield 
To fickle Chance, and Chaos judge the strife. 
The former, vain to hope, argues as vain 

The latter; for what place can be for us 235 

W^ithin heaven's bound, unless heaven's Lord Supreme 
We overpower ? Suppose he should relent, 
And pubhsh grace to all, on promise made 
Of new subjection ; with what eyes could we 
Stand in his presence humble, and receive 240 

Strict laws imposed, to celebrate his throne 

1 " With what is punished," i.e., with the punishment which is already 
inflicted. 

^ Heat ; like the Latin 7'apor. 

^ " Worth waiting," i.e., worth waiting for. 

■* " Our present lot appears," etc., i.e., for an ill lot, it is not the worst. 



BOOK II.] ' PARADISE LOST. 6 1 

With warbled hymns, and to his Godhead sing 

Forced halleluiahs, ^ while he lordly sits 

Our envied sovran, and his altar breathes 

Ambrosial odors and ambrosial flowers, 245 

Our servile offerings ? This must be our task 

In heaven, this our delight. How wearisome 

Eternity so spent in worship paid 

To whom we hate ! Let us not then pursue, 

By force impossible, by leave obtained 250 

Unacceptable, though in heaven, our state 

Of splendid vassalage ; but rather seek 

Our own good from ourselves, and from our own 2 

Live to ourselves, though in this vast recess. 

Free and to none accountable, preferring 255 

Hard liberty before the easy yoke 

Of servile pomp. Our greatness wih appear 

Then most conspicuous when great things of small, 

Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse. 

We can create, and in what place soe'er 260 

Thrive under evil, and work ease out of pain 

Through labor and endurance. This deep world 

Of darkness do we dread ? How oft amidst 

Thick clouds and dark doth heaven's all-ruling Sire 

Choose to reside, his glorv un obscured, 265 

And with the majesty of darkness round 

Covers his throne, from whence deep thunders roar, 

Mustering their rage, and heaven resembles hell? 

As he our darkness, cannot we his light 

Imitate when we please ? -"^ This desert^soil 270 

Wants not her hidden luster, gems and gold ; 

Nor want we skill or art from whence to raise 

1 Hallelujahs ; Hebrew, halchi (" praise ye ") and/c?// (" Jehovah "). 
'- " From our own," i.e., depending on our own conditions or resources, 
live as we wish. 

3 See I Kinjjs viii. 12; Ps. xviii. 11, n, xcvii. 2. 



b2 MILTOX. [BOOK II. 

Magnificence ; and what can heaven show more ? 

Our torments also may, in length of time, 

Become our elements, these piercing fires 275 

As soft as now severe, our temper ^ changed 

Into their temper; which must needs remove 

The sensible - of pain. All things invite 

To peaceful counsels, and the settled state 

Of order, how in safety best we may 280 

Compose ^ our present evils, with regard 

Of what we are and where, dismissing quite 

All thoughts of war. Ye have what I advise." 

He scarce had finished, when such murmur filled 
The assembly as when hollow rocks retain 28 5 

The sound of blustering winds, which all night long 
Had roused the sea, now with hoarse cadence * lull 
Seafaring men o'erwatched,-"^ whose bark by chance, 
Or pinnace,^ anchors in a craggy bay 

After the tempest. Such applause was heard 29c 

As Mammon ended, and his sentence pleased, 
Advising peace : for such another field 
I'hey dreaded worse than hell ; so much the fear 
Of thunder and the sword of MichaeF 

Wrought still within them; and no less desire 295 

To found this nether empire, which might rise, 
By policy and long process of time, 
In emulation opposite to heaven. 
Which when Beelzebub perceived — than^ whom. 



1 Constitution. 2 Sense ; feeling. 

3 Settle ; adjust ; reconcile. 

4 A falling or sinking of sound. 

5 Weary with too much watching. 

^ A small two-masted vessel which is also fitted with oars. 
■^ An archangel, and a leader of the celestial army against the revolting 
angels. 

8 Used as a preposition. 



BOOK II.] PARADISE LOST. 63 

Satan except, none higher sat — with grave 300 

Aspect' 1 he rose, and in his rising seemed 

A pillar of state * Deep on his front engraven 2 

Deliberation sat, and pubHc care ; 

And princely counsel in his face yet shone, 

Majestic, though in ruin. Sage he stood, 305 

With Atlantean ^ shoulders, fit to bear 

The weight of mightiest monarchs ; his look 

Drew audience and attention still as night 

Or summer's noontide ^ air, while thus he spake : — 

" Thrones and imperial Powers, offspring of heaven, 310 

Ethereal Virtues ! or these titles now 
Must we renounce, and, changing style, be called 
Princes of hell ? for so the popular vote 
Inclines, here to continue, and build up here 
A growing empire; doubtless ! while we dream, 315 

And know not that the King of heaven hath doomed 
This place our dungeon, not our safe retreat 
Beyond his potent arm, to live exempt 
From heaven's high jurisdiction, in new league 
Banded against his throne, but to remain 320 

In strictest bondage, though thus far removed. 
Under the inevitable curb, reserved 
His captive multitude. P'or he, be sure, 
In highth or depth, ^ still first and last will reign 
Sole king, and of his kingdom lose no part 325 

By our revolt, but over hell extend 



1 Milton always so accents this word. " Process," line 297, also has the 
accent changed by the verse. 

2 " Deep on his front engraven," i.e., deeply engraved on his forehead. 

3 Like those of Atlas, who bore the weight of heaven on his shoulders. 

* The hush and stillness of the noon hour of summer was explained by a 
Greek legend, that then Pan slept. 

^ " In highth or depth," i.e., in the height of heaven, or in the depth of 
hell. 



64 MILTON. [BOOK ii. 

His empire, and with iron scepter ^ rule 

Us here, as with his golden those in heaven. 

What sit w^e then projecting peace and war ? 

War hath determined us '-^ and foiled with loss 330 

Irreparable ; terms of peace yet none 

Vouchsafed or sought ; for what peace will be given 

To us enslaved, but custody severe. 

And stripes and arbitrary punishment 

Inflicted ? and what peace can we return 335 

But, to our power,-"^ hostility and hate, 

Untamed reluctance,"* and revenge, though slow, 

Yet ever plotting how the conqueror least 

May reap his conquest, and may least rejoice 

In doing what we most in suffering feel ? 340 

Nor will occasion want,-^ nor shall we need 

With dangerous expedition to invade 

Heaven, whose high walls fear no assault or siege, 

Or ambush from the deep. What if we find 

Some easier enterprise ? There is a place 345 

(If ancient and prophetic fame ^ in heaven 

Err not), another world, the happy seat 

Of some new race, called Man, about this time 

To be created like to us," though less 

In power and excellence, but favored more 350 

Of Him who rules above ; so was his will 

Pronounced among the gods, and by an oath 

That shook heaven's whole circumference confirmed. ^ 

1 " Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron " (Ps. ii. 9). 

2 " Determined us," i.e., settled us definitely to this line of conduct. 

3 " To our power," i.e., to the extent of our power ; so far as we are able. 

4 In the original Latin sense of ** resistance." 

5 " Occasion want," i.e., opportunity be wanting. 

6 Rumor, as in Book I. 651. 7 See Ps. viii. 4, 5. 

8 "Wherein God . . . confirmed it by an oath" (Heb. vi. 17). This 
passage recalls Homer's description in the Iliad (Book I. 530) of the nod of 
Zeus, which shook Olympus. 



liuoK II.] PARADISE LOST. 65 

Thither let us bend all our thoughts, to learn 
What creatures there inhabit, of what mold 355 

Or substance, how endued, and what their power 
And where their weakness ; how attempted best, 
By force or subtlet}-. Though heaven be shut, 
And heaven's high Arbitrator ^ sit secure 

In his own strength, this place may he exposed, 360 

The utmost border of his kingdom, left 
To their defense who hold it : here, perhaps, 
Some advantageous act may be achieved 
By sudden onset, either with hell fire 

To waste his whole creation, or possess 365 

All as our own, and drive, as we are driven, 
The puny 2 habitants ;*" or, if not drive, 
Seduce them to our party, that their God 
May prove their foe, and with repenting hand 
Abolish his own works. ^ This would surpass 370 

Common revenge, and interrupt his joy 
In our confusion, and our joy upraise 
In his disturbance ; when his darling sons. 
Hurled headlong to partake with us, shall curse 
Their frail original-'' and faded bliss, 375 

Faded so soon ! Advise ^ if this be worth 
Attempting, or to sit in darkness here 
Hatching vain empires." Thus Beelzebub 
Pleaded his devilish counsel, first devised'' 

By Satan, and in part proposed ; for whence, 380 

But from the author of all ill, could spring 
So deep a malice, to confound the race 

/ 

1 Ruler ; governor. 

2 Later born, this being the original meaning of the word from the French 
puis nc. In this meaning, Milton uses it in the Areopagitica : " He . . . must 
appear in print like a punie with his guardian." 

3 Inhabitants. 4 gee Gen. vi. 7. 5 Originator ; author. 
6 Consider; take counsel. 7 See Book I. 650-656. 

5 



66 MJLTOX. [BOOK II. 

Of mankind in one root,' and earth with hell 

To mingle and involve, done all to spite 

The great Creator ? But their spite still serves 385 

His glory to augment. The bold design 

Pleased highly those infernal states,- and joy 

Sparkled in all their eyes : with full assent 

They vote: whereat his speech he thus renews: — 

" Well have ye judged, well ended long debate, 390 

Synod ^ of gods, and, like to what ye are, 

Great things resolved, which from the lowest deep 

Will once more lift us up, in spite of fate, 

Nearer our ancient seat ; perhaps in view 

Of those bright confines, whence, with neighboring arms^ 395 

And opportune excursion, we may chance 

Reenter heaven ; or else in some mild zone 

Dwell, not unvisited of heaven's fair light, 

Secure, and at the brightening orient beam 

Purge off this gloom : the soft, delicious air, 400 

To heal the scar of these corrosive fires. 

Shall breathe her balm. But, first, whom shall we send 

In search of this new world ? whom shall we find 

Sufficient ? who shall tempt with wandering feet 

The dark, unbottomed, infinite abyss, 405 

And through the palpable obscure ^' find out 

His uncouth ^' way, or spread his aery flight, 

Upborne with indefatigable wings 

1 " One root," i.e., the first made of mankind. 

2 Estates ; the orders or classes into which a population is divided for 
political powers; as, in Great Britain, the tliree estates are lords, temporal 
and spiritual, and commons. 

3 Meeting ; assembly. 

* " Neighboring arms," i.e., our army near by. 

'^ " Palpable obscure," i.e., the darkness which may be felt by the touch 
(see Exod. x. 21). The adjective " obscure" is used as a noun. 

6 Unknown. " Couth " is a past participle of cutinan (" to know "), and 
is allied to " can," " ken," " unco," " knew," etc. 



BOOK IT.] PARADISE LOS 'J'. 67 

Over the vast abrupt,^ ere he arrive- 

The happy isle ? Wliat strength, what art, can then 410 

Suffice, or what e\ asion bear him safe 

Through the strict senteries -^ anel stations thick 

Of angels watching round ? Here he had need* 

All circumspection, and we now no less 

Choice in our suffrage ; for, on whom M^e send, 415 

The weight of all, and our last hope, relies." 

This said, he sat ; and expectation held 
His look suspense, awaiting who appeared^ 
To second, or oppose, or undertake 

The perilous attempt. But all sat mute,^ 420 

Pondering the danger with deep thoughts ; and each 
In other's countenance read his own dismay. 
Astonished. None among the choice and prime 
Of those heaven -warring champions could be found 
So hardy as to proffer or accept, 425 

Alone, the dreadful voyage ; till, at last, 
Satan, whom now transcendent glory raised 
Above his fellows, with monarchal pride 
Conscious of highest worth, unmoved thus spake: — 

" O Progeny of heaven ! empyreal Thrones ! 430 

With reason hath deep silence and demur 
Seized us, though undismayed. Long is the way 
And hard, that out of hell leads up to light. 
Our prison strong, tliis huge convex "' of fire, 
Outrageous to devour, immures us round 435 

1 Vast gulf : an adjective used as a noun. 
^ To come to ; arrive at. 

3 Sentinels ; guards. 

4 " Had need," i.e., would have need of. 

5 He waited expectant and in doubt, looking over the assembly. 

6 Commentators have supposed, that in this passage Milton had in mind 
the Roman senate, who sat mute, after the death of the Scipios, before their 
choice of a commander for the army in Spain. 

" Satan supposes himself without the vault. 



68 MJI/JVX. [KooK II, 

Ninefold ;' and gates of burning adamant, 

Barred over us, prohibit all egress. 

These passed, if any pass, the void profound 

Of unessential ^ night receives him next, 

AVide-gaping, and with utter loss of being 440 

Threatens him, plunged in that abortive ^ gulf. 

If thence he scape, into whatever world. 

Or unknown region, what remains'* him less 

Than unknown dangers, and as hard escape ? 

But I should ill become this throne, O Peers, 445 

And this imperial sovranty, adorned 

With splendor, armed with power, if aught proposed 

And judged of public moment in the shape 

Of difficulty or danger, could deter 

Me from attempting. Wherefore do I assume 450 

These royalties, and not refuse to reign. 

Refusing ^ to accept as great a share 

Of hazard as of honor, due ahke 

To him who reigns, and so much to him due 

Of hazard more as he above the rest 455 

High honored sits ? ^ Go, therefore, mighty Powers, 

Terror of heaven, though fallen ! intend ' at home. 

While here shall be our home, what best may ease 

The present misery, and render hell 

More tolerable ; if there be cure or charm 460 

To respite, or deceive, or slack the pain 

Of this ill mansion :^ intermit no watch 

1 See lines 645-648. 

2 Without essence or substance. 

3 Coming to naught ; producing nothing. See lines 624, 625. 

4 Awaits. 5 If I refuse. 

6 In the passage beginning with line 445, Satan finely expresses the feeling 
of noblesse oblige (" nobility obliges," " noble birth or rank compels to noble 
acts "). 

'^ Turn the mind; attend to (Latin, intendere animus). 

^ Tarrying place. 



BOOK II.] PARADISE LOST. 69 

Against a wakeful foe, while I abroad 

Through all the coasts of dark destruction seek 

Deliverance for us all. This enterprise 465 

None shall partake with me." Thus saying, rose 

The monarch, and prevented 1 all reply ; 

Prudent lest, from his resolution raised, 

Others among the chief might offer now, 

Certain to be refused, what erst they feared, 470 

And, so refused, might in opinion - stand 

His rivals, winning cheap the high repute 

Which he through hazard huge must earn. But they 

Dreaded not more the adventure than his voice 

Forbidding; and at once with him they rose. 475 

Their rising all at once was as the sound 

Of thunder heard remote. Towards him they bend 

With awful reverence prone, and as a god 

Extol him equal to the highest in heaven. 

Nor failed they to express how much they praised 480 

That for the general safety he despised 

His own: for neither-^ do the spirits damned 

Lose all their virtue ; lesf* bad men should boast 

Their specious deeds on earth, which glory excites. 

Or close'' ambition varnished o'er with zeal. 485 

Thus they their doubtful consultations dark 
Ended, rejoicing in their matchless chief : 
As, when from mountain tops the dusky clouds 
Ascending, while the north wind sleeps, o'erspread 
Heaven's cheerful face, the louring element ^ 490 

Scowls o'er the darkened landskip ^ snow, or shower ; 

1 Forestalled ; hindered by going before (from pro; and venire). 

2 Public opinion. 3 ^q,x_ even. 

4 Before " lest " may be supplied, for the sake of clearness, " I say this." 

5 Concealed. 

6 " Louring element," i.e., scowling, threatening sky or air. 
'^ Archaic form for " landscape." 



70 MILTOK. [BOOK II. 

If chance the radiant sun, with farewell sweet, 

Extend his evening beam, the fields revive. 

The birds their notes renew, and bleating herds 

Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings.^ 495 

O shame to men ! devil with devil damned 

Firm concord holds ; men only disagree 

Of creatures rational, though under hope 

Of heavenly grace ; and, God proclaiming peace, 

Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife coo 

Among themselves, and levy - cruel wars 

AVasting the earth, each other to destroy : 

As if (which might induce us to accord) 

Man had not helhsh foes enow '^ besides, 

That day and night for his destruction wait !'^ ^05 

The Stygian council thus dissolved ; and forth 
In order came the grand infernal Peers : 
Midst came their mighty paramount,^ and seemed 
Alone 6 the antagonist of heaven, nor less 

Than hell's dread emperor, with pomp supreme, 510 

And godlike imitated state : him round 
A globe " of fiery seraphim inclosed 
With briglit emblazonry,^ and liorreiU ^ arms. 
Then of their session ended they bid cry 

With trumpet's regal sound the great result : 515 

Towards the four winds four speedy cherubim 

1 The subject of two names would require the plural verb. Perhaps Mil- 
ton thought the subjects so connected as to form but one idea; or he may 
have followed the older English usage, common in Shakespeare, which is 
founded on Greek and Latin construction. 

■' Raise; excite; set in motion. "^ An old form of " enough." 

4 Milton turns from his subject to consider men, and especially refers to 
his own stirring and disputatious times. 

s Chief; superior; the highest in rank or importance. 

6 Fitted alone. 

"^ Like the Latin i^-Iobus (" cunipact circle or bodyguard "). 

8 See Book L 53S. 9 Bristling. 



BOOK II.] PARADISE LOST. 71 

Put to their mouths the sounding alchymy/ 

By harald's voice explained;'-^ the hollow abyss 

Heard far and wide, and all the host of hell 

AVith deafening shout returned them loud acclaim. 520 

Thence more at ease their minds, and somewhat raised 

By false presumptuous hope, the ranged powers 

Disband ; and, wandering, each his se\^eral way 

Pursues, as inclination or sad choice 

Leads him perplexed, where he may likeliest find 525 

Truce to his restless thoughts, and entertain ^ 

The irksome hours, till his great chief return. . 

Part on the plain, or in the air sublime,'* 

Upon the wing or in swift race contend. 

As at the Olympian games or Pythian fields;^ 530 

Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal ^ 

With rapid wheels, or fronted "' brigads form : 

As when, to warn proud cities, war appears 

AVaged in the troubled sky, and armies rush 

To battle in the clouds;^ before each van 535 

Prick 9 forth the aery knights, and couch ^*^ their spears, 

Till thickest legions close ; with feats of arms 

1 The science of transmuting metals, especially the finer from the baser. 
It here refers to the trumpet of skillfully mixed metal. 

2 The council had been secret (see Book I. 795). The herald explained 
the reason of the blast. 

3 While away ; employ. 4 High up. 

5 " Olympian games or Pythian fields," i.e., two of the great national 
games of Greece, celebrated every four years at Olympia in Eiis, and near 
the temple of the Pythian Apollo at Delphi. There were foot races, horse 
races, wrestling, boxing, leaping, contests in music, in poetry, exhibition of 
sculpture, etc. 

6 " Shun the goal," i.e., avoid touching^ the goal or post round which the 
charioteers drove close to shorten their course. 

"^ Standing opposed or opposite. 

^ Commentators suppose Milton to refer to the aurora borealis. 
9 Spur on the horse with prick ; ride fast. 
^^ Rest against the breast armor. 



72 MILTON. [BOOK II. 

From either end of heaven the welkin ^ burns. 

Others, with vast Typhoean ^ rage, more feli,-'^ 

Rend up both rocks and hills, and ride the air 540 

In whirlwind ; hell scarce holds the wild uproar : 

As when Alcides,* from CEchalia crowned 

With conquest, felt the envenomed robe, and tore 

Through pain up by the roots Thessalian pines, 

And Lichas from the top of CEta threw 545 

Into the Euboic sea. Others, more mild, 

Retreated ^ in a silent valley, sing 

With notes angelical to many a harp 

Their own heroic deeds, and hapless fall 

By doom of battle, and complain that fate 550 

Free virtue should inthrall to force or chance.^ 

Their song was partial ;" but the harmony 

(What could it less when spirits immortal sing ?) 

Suspended hell, and took with ravishment 

The thronging audience.^ In discourse more sweet 555 

(For eloquence the soul, song charms the sense ^) 

1 Sky; allied to the German zvolketi (" clouds "). 

2 T3'phoeus, who is identified with Typhon (see Book I. 199), hurled rocks 
against heaven. 3 Cruel ; fierce. 

4 Hercules, the grandson of Alc?eus, coming back from the conquest of 
Eurytus in Qichalia, put on the robe which his wife Deianeira gave him. 
It was smeared with the blood of the centaur Nessus, and she supposed it 
a charm by which she might regain his affections. The poison worked such 
suffering, that Hercules threw the bearer, Lichas, into the sea. 

5 Retired. 

6 These lines may refer to the distich of Euripides, which Brutus is said 
to have quoted when he took his own life: " Virtue, thou wert, after all, an 
idle tale. I practised thee as a reality, but thou wast, after all, the thrall of 
force." 

"^ " Their song was partial," i.e., one-sided; for instance, in giving virtue 
to themselves. 

8 Milton may have had in mind the effect of the music of Orpheus told by 
Virgil in Georgic IV. 481 : the Eumenides were spellbound, Cerberus held 
his three mouths agape, and Ixion stayed his wheel. 

9 Milton's Puritanic distinction would hardly be admitted at the present 



BOOK II.] PARADISE LOST. 73 

Others apart sat on a hill retired, 

In thoughts more elevate, ^ and reasoned high 

Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate. 

Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute, 560 

And found no end, in wandering ''-' mazes lost. 

Of good and evil much they argued then. 

Of happiness and final misery. 

Passion and apathy, ^ and glory and shame : 

Vain wisdom all and false philosophy ! 565 

Yet, with a pleasing sorcery, could charm 

Pain for a while, or anguish, and excite 

Fallacious hope, or arm the obdured* breast 

With stubborn patience as with triple steel. •'^ 

Another part, in squadrons and gross ^ bands, 570 

On bold adventure to discover wide 

That dismal world, if any clime perhaps 

Might yield them easier habitation, bend 

Four ways their flying march, along the banks 

Of four infernal rivers, that disgorge 575 

Into the burning lake their baleful streams, — 

Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate ; 

Sad Acheron of soitow, black and deep ; 

Cocytus, named of lamentation loud 

Heard on the rueful stream ; fierce Phlegethon,'^ 580 

day. The appeal of eloquence may be to the senses ; and song may touch 
only the higher elements of the soul. 

1 More elevated in thoughts. Milton speaks from a Puritan's point of 
view, and makes the first metaphysicians devils (see lines 146-15 1, note). 

^ Causing to wander. 

3 Freedom from the feeling of pleasure and pain, which was an ideal 
sought by the Stoics. ^ Hardened. 

5 Milton again reverts to the pleasures ke had had in philosophy. 

6 Large. 

■^ The names of the four rivers of hell are from the Greek mythology: 
Styx, the river of hate {ctvx^(^, " I hate ") ; Acheron, the river of pain ("a^og, 
" ache," beo), " I flow ") ; Cocytus, the river of wailing (kukv-oc, " wailing ") ; 
Phlegethon, the river of fire {(p'/xyd), " I burn "). 



74 MILTON. [BOOK II. 

Whose waves of torrent ^ fire inflame with rage. 

Far off from these, a slow and silent stream, 

Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls 

Her watery labyrinth,- whereof who drinks 

Forthwith his former state and being forgets, 585 

Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain. 

Beyond this flood a frozen continent '^ 

Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms 

Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land 

Thaws not, but gathers heap,^ and ruin seems 590 

Of ancient pile ; all else deep snow and ice, 

A gulf profound as that vSerbonian bog -^ 

Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, 

Where armies whole have sunk : the parching air 

Burns frore,^ and cold performs the effect of fire. 595 

Thither, by harpy-footed^ Furies^ haled,*^ 

At certain revolutions '^ all the damned 

Are brought ; and feel by turns the bitter change 

Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce, 

From beds of raging fire to starve ^^ in ice 600 

Their soft ethereal '- warmth, and there to pine 

Immovable, infixed, and frozen round 

Periods of time ; thence hurried back to fire. 

1 Burning or rushing. 

2 "Labyrinth" would indicate intricate turnings and windings of the 
river. 

3 Dante also finds frozen regions in his hell. 4 Bulk. 

5 Lake Serbonis was between Mount Casius and the city of Damiata, near 
one of the mouths of the Nile. It was surrounded by hills of sand, which 
were carried into the water by high winds. " Many of those," says Diodorus 
Siculus, " who were ignorant of the peculiarity of the place lost their way, 
and disappeared with whole armies." 

6 An old form of the participle *' frozen." 

7 With crooked talons, such as Virgil describes the Harpies in the ^neid. 
** The Greek Furies were j^ersonifications of a guilty conscience. 

^ Hauled. i" I'lxplaincd in the lines to 604. H Suffer; waste. 

12 The warmth of bodies made of such essence. 



BOOK II.] PARADISE LOST. 75 

They ferry over this Lethean sound ^ 

Both to and fro, their sorrow to augment, 605 

And wish and struggle, as they pass, to reach 

The tempting stream, with one small drop to lose 

In sweet forgetfulness all pain and woe. 

All in one moment, and so near the brink ; 

But Fate withstands,, and, to oppose the attempt, 610 

Medusa 2 with Gorgonian terror guards 

The ford, and of itself the water flies 

All taste of living wight,'' as once it fled 

llie lip of Tantalus.'* Thus roving on 

In confused march forlorn, the adventurous bands, 615 

With shuddering horror pale, and eyes aghast, 

Viewed first their lamentable lot, and found 

No rest. Through many a dark and dreary vale 

They passed, and many a region dolorous, 

O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,^ 620 

Rocks, caves, lakes, fens, bogs, dens, and shades of death, 

A universe of death, which God by curse 

Created evil, for evil only good ; 

AVhere all life dies, death lives, and Nature breeds, 

Perverse, all monstrous, all prodigious things, 625 

Abominable, inutterable, and worse 

Than fables yet have feigned, or fear conceived, 

Gorgons, and Hydras,^ and Chimseras'^ dire. 

1 A strait or arm of the sea. 

2 In Greek story, one of the three Gorgons. They had brazen daws, 
enormous teeth, and hair of snakes, and to look on them turned one to 
stone. 3 Creature. 

4 In Greek mythology, a king, who was placed to the chin in water for 
his wrongdoing. As often as he stooped /fo drink, the water flowed back. 
From the name comes our English " tantalize." ^ Mountain. 

6 Monsters with many heads. The one at Lake Lerna, which Hercules 
destroyed, was said to have nine. 

"^ Fire-breathing monsters with heads of lions, bodies of goats, and tails of 
serpents. 



76 MILTON. [BOOK II. 

Meanwhile the adversary of God and man, 
Satan, with thoughts inflamed of highest design, 630 

Puts on swift wings, and toward the gates of hell 
Explores his solitary flight : sometimes * 

He scours the right-hand coast, sometimes the left ; 
Now shaves ^ with level wing the deep, then soars 
Up to the fiery concave towering high. 635 

As when far off at sea a fleet descried 
Hangs in the clouds,'-' by equinoctial winds ^ 
Close '* saihng from Bengala,-'^ or the isles 
Of Ternate and Tidore,^ whence merchants bring 
Their spicy drugs ; they on the trading flood," 640 

Through the wide Ethiopian ^ to the Cape,^ 
Ply stemming nightly ^^ toward the pole:^^ so seemed 
Far off the flying fiend. At last appear 
Hell bounds, high reaching to the horrid roof, 
And thrice threefold the gates ; three folds were brass 645 

Three iron, three of adamantine rock. 
Impenetrable, impaled ^^ with circhng fire. 
Yet unconsumed. Before the gates there sat 
On either side a formidable shape. 

The one seemed woman to the waist, and fair, 650 

But ended foul in many a scaly fold, 
Voluminous and vast, a serpent armed 
With mortal sting. About her middle round 

1 Comes very near touching or grazing. 

2 Ships when seen far off at sea seem to hang in the clouds. 

3 " Equinoctial winds," i.e., winds blowing along the equator. 

4 In compact group. 5 Bengal. 

^ " Ternate and Tidore, " i.e., two of the Moluccas, or Spice Islands. 
"^ " Trading flood," i.e., the part of the ocean upon which the trade ships 
sail. 

8 Indian Ocean. 9 Cape of Good Hope. 

10 Used instead of " daily " to bear out the simile of the darkness of 
Satan's way. 

11 The south pole. 12 Inclosed; surrounded. 



BOOK II.] PARADISE LOST. 77 

A cry ^ of hell hounds never ceasing barked 

With wide Cerberean "^ mouths full loud, and rung 655 

A hideous peal ; yet, when they list,^ w^ould creep, 

If aught disturbed their noise, into her side. 

And kennel there ; yet there still barked and howled 

Within unseen. Far less abhorred than these 

Vexed Scylla,'^ bathing in the sea that parts 660 

Calabria-'' from the hoarse Trinacrian ^ shore; 

Nor uglier follow the night hag,' when, called 

In secret, riding through the air she comes, 

Lured with the smell of infant blood, to dance 

With Lapland witches, while the laboring^ moon 665 

Echpses at their charms. The other shape, — 

If shape it might be called that shape had none 

Distinguishable in member, joint, or limb ; 

Or substance might be called that shadow seemed. 

For each seemed either, — black it stood as night, 670 

Fierce as ten Furies, terrible as hell. 

And shook a dreadful dart : what seemed his head 

The likeness of a kingly crown had on. 

Satan was now at hand, and from his seat 

1 Pack. 

2 Like those of Cerberus, the three-headed dog of helL 

3 Willed. 

4 A maiden whose body the enchantress Circe changed below the waist 
into frightful monsters always barking. The old Greek story is, that Circe 
was jealous of Scylla, and so deformed her by pouring the juice of poisonous 
herbs into the water in which she bathed. This sudden metamorphosis so ter- 
rified Scylla, that she threw herself into the sea, and became the rocks which 
bear her name. (See the Odysseus, XII. 89.) 

5 Southern Italy. 

6 Sicilian. Sicily is the land of the tlifee promontories {rpliq "aKpat) at 
the three corners of the triangle. 

7 The allusion is to the old Scandinavian legend of the need of children's 
blood in the incantation of witches, their frequenting Lapland, and their 
power to cause eclipses. 

8 Eclipses are called " the labors " by Latin poets. 



7^ MILTON. [BOOK 11. 

The monster moving onward came as fast 675 

With horrid strides ; hell trembled as he strode. 

The undaunted liend what this might be admired 1 — 

Admired, not feared (God and his Son except,^ 

Created thing naught valued he, nor shunned), 

And with disdainful look thus first began: — 680 

" Whence and what art thou, execrable shape, 
That dar'st, though grim and terrible, advance 
Thy miscreated ^ front athwart my way 
To yonder gates ? Through them I mean to pass, 
That be assured, without leave asked of thee. 685 

Retire ; or taste thy folly, and learn bv proof. 
Hell-born, not to contend with spirits of heaven." 

To whom the goblin, -^ full of wrath, replied: — 
" Art thou that traitor angel, art thou he, 

Who first broke peace in heaven and faith, till then 690 

Unbroken, and in proud rebellious arms 
Drew after him the third part of heaven's sons. 
Conjured^ against the Highest ; for which both thou 
And they, outcast from God, are here condemned 
To waste eternal days in woe and pain ? 695 

And reckon'st thou thyself with spirits of heaven. 
Hell-doomed,^ and breath'st defiance here and scorn, 
Wliere I reign king, and, to enrage thee more. 
Thy king and lord ? Back to thy punishment. 
False fugitive ; and to thy speed add wings, 700 

Lest with a whip of scorpions "' I pursue 
Thy lingering, or with one stroke of this dart 
Strange horror seize thee, and pangs unfelt before." 

^ As in Book I. 690. 2 Being excepted. 

^ Misshapen ; deformed. 4 An underground demon. 

5 Conspiring; sworn together in conspiracy. 

6 " Hell-doomed " is the retort to " liell-born " in line 687. 

'^ A biblical name for a severe scourge. " I will chastise you with scor- 
pions " (2 Chron. x. 14). 



HOOK II.] PARADISE LOST. 79 

So spake the grisly terror, and in shape, 
So speaking and so threatening, grew tenfold 705 

More dreadful and deform.^ On the other side, 
Incensed with indignation, Satan stood 
Unterrified, and hke a comet burned, 
That fires the length of Ophiuchus - huge 

In tlie arctic sky, and from his horrid hair^ 710 

Shakes pestilence and war. Each at the head 
Leveled his deadly aim : their fatal haiids 
No second stroke intend ; and such a frown 
Each cast at the other as when two black clouds. 
With heaven's artillery fraught,'* come rattling on 715 

Over the Caspian ; ^ then stand front to front. 
Hovering a space, till winds the signal blow 
To join their dark encounter in mid air. 
So frowned the mighty combatants that hell 

Orew darker at their frown; so matched they stood; 720 

For never but once more was either like 
To meet so great a foe.^ And now great deeds 
Had been achieved, vrhereof all hell had rmig. 
Had not the snaky sorceress, that sat 

Fast by hell gate and kept the fatal key, 725 

Risen, and with hideous outcry rushed between. 

1 The Latin de (" away from ") s.-ndfor/na (" form or shape ") explain the 
word. 

2 The northern constellation Serpentarius, or the Serpent, which is about 
forty degrees long. The name (from two Greek words meaning " serpent," 
and " to hold") may refer to the fable of the infant Hercules squeezing to 
death two serpents. 

3 In reference to the tail. " Comet " is derived from the Greek koj-it) (" flow- 
ing hair "). Comets were supposed to fopetell disasters. 

4 Laden or charged with lightning, and rattling with thunder. 

5 Noted for its storms. 

6 Christ. "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" (i Cor. 
XV. 26). " That through death he might destroy him that had the power of 
death, that is, the devil" (Heb. ii. 14; compare also Isa. xxv. 8). 



8o MIL'JVX. [KfXjK II. 

'* O father, what intends thy hand," she cried, 
" Against thy only son ? What fury, O son, 
Possesses thee to bend that mortal dart 

Against thy father's head ? and know'st for whom ? 730 

For Him who sits above, and laughs the while 
At thee, ordained his drudge to execute 
Whate'er his wrath, which he calls justice, bids, — 
His wrath which one day will destroy ye both." 

She spake, and at her words the hellish pest 735 

Forebore : then these to her Satan returned : — 

" So strange thy outcry, and thy words so strange 
Thou interposest, that my sudden 1 hand, 
Prevented, spares ^ to tell thee yet by deeds 

What it intends, till first I know of thee 740 

What thing thou art, thus double-formed, and why, 
In this infernal vale first met, thou call'st 
Me father, and that phantasm call'st my son. 
I know thee not, nor ever saw till now 
Sight more detestable than ^ him and thee." 745 

To whom thus the portress of hell gate replied : — 
" Hast thou forgot me, then ; and do I seem 
Now in thine eye so foul ? once deemed so fair 
In heaven, when at the assembly, and in sight 
Of all the seraphim with thee combined 750 

In bold conspiracy against heaven's King, 
All on a sudden miserable pain 
Surprised thee, dim thine eyes, and dizzy swum 
In darkness, while thy head flames thick and fast 
Threw forth, till on the left side opening wnde, 755 

Likest to thee in shape and countenance bright. 
Then shining heavenly fair, a goddess armed. 
Out of thy head I sprung.* Amazement seized 

1 Hasty ; rash. 2 Forbears. •" See line 299, note. 

4 The old classic myth of tlie birth of Athene, goddess of wisdom, from 
the head of Zeus, is here used to explain the origin of sin from Satan. 



BOOK II.] PARADISE LOST. 8l 

All the host of heaven ; back they recoiled afraid 

At first, and called me 6"/;/, and for a sign 760 

Portentous held me ; but, familiar grown, 

I pleased, and with attractive graces won 

The most averse, thee chiefly, who, full oft 

Thyself in me thy perfect image viewing, 764 

Becam'st enamored. . . . Meanwhile war arose, 

And fields ^ were fought in heaven : wherein remained 

(For what could else ?) to our almighty foe 

Clear victory ; to our part loss and rout 770 

Through all the empyrean.- Down they fell, 

Driven headlong from the pitch ^ of heaven, down 

Into this deep ; and in the general fall 

I also : at which time this powerful key 

Into my hands was given, with charge to keep 775 

These gates forever shut, which none can pass 

Without my opening. Pensive here I sat. 

At last this odious offspring whom thou seest. 
Thine own begotten, breakmg violent way. 

Forth issued, brandishing his fatal dart, 786 

Made to destroy. I fled, and cried out Death ! 

Hell trembled at the hideous name, and sighed 

From all her caves, and back resounded Death / 

I fled; but he pursued (though more, it seems, 790 

Inflamed with lust than rage), and, swifter far. 

Me overtook, his mother, all dismayed. 

These yelling monsters, that with ceaseless cry 795 

Surround me, as thou saw'st, hourly conceived 
And hourly born, with sorrow infinite 

1 Battles. 2 The remote heavens. 3 Height. 

6 



82 MILTON. [BOOK II. 

To me . . . with conscious^ terrors vex me round, 80 1 

That rest or intermission none 1 find. 

Before mine eyes in opposition sits 

Grim Death, my son and foe, who sets them on, 

And me, his parent, would fuU soon devour 805 

For want of other prey, but that he knows 

His end with mine involved,'-^ and knows that I 

Should prove a bitter morsel, and his bane,^ 

Whenever that shall be : so Fate jDronounced. 

But thou, O father, I forewarn thee, shun 810 

His deadly arrow ; neither vainly hope 

To be invulnerable in those bright arms, 

Though tempered hea\enly ; for that mortal dint,* 

Save He who reigns above, none can resist." 

She finished ; and the subtle fiend his lore ^ 815 

Soon learned, now milder, and thus answered smooth : — 

" Dear daughter, since thou claim'st me for thy sire, 
And my fair son here show'st me . . . know, 821 

I come no enemy, but to set free 
From out this dark and dismal house of pain 
Both him and tliee, and all the heavenly host 
Of spirits that, in our just pretenses^ armed, 825 

Fell with us from on high. From them I go 
This uncouth " errand sole, and one for all 
Myself expose with lonely steps to tread 
The unfounded '^ deep, and through the void immense 
To search with wandering quest a place foretold 830 

Should be, and, by concurring signs, ere now 
Created vast and round, a place of bhss 

1 Known or perceived as existing in one's self. 

2 " His end with mine involved," i.e., death dying after sin. 

3 Ruin; destruction; from the Anglo-Saxon bana (" slayer"). 

4 Stroke. 

5 His lesson, — that it was advisable to gain the good will of Sin, 

6 Claims : its original meaning. "^ See line 407, note. ^^ liottomless. 



LOOK II.] PARADISE LOST. 83 

In the purlieus ^ of heaven ; and therein placed 

A race of upstart creatures, to supply 

Perhaps our vacant room, though more removed, 835 

Lest heaven, surcharged with potent multitude, 

Might hap to move new broils. Be this, or aught 

Than this more secret, now designed, I haste 

To know ; and, this once known, shall soon return, 

And bring ye to the place where thou and Death 840 

Shall dwell at ease, and up and down unseen 

Wing silently the buxom - air, embalmed 

With odors. There ye shall be fed and filled 

Immeasurably ; all things shall be your prey." ''• 

He ceased ; for both seemed highly pleased, and Death 845 
Grinned horrible a ghastly smile, to hear 
His famine should be filled, and blessed his maw* 
Destined to that good hour. No less rejoiced 
His mother bad ; and thus bespake her sire : — 

"The key of this infernal pit, by due 850 

And by command of heaven's all-powerful King, 
I keep, by him forbidden to unlock 
'I'hese adamantine gates ; against all force 
Death ready stands to interpose his dart, 

Fearless to be o'ermatched by living might. 855 

But what owe I to his commands above. 
Who hates me, and hath hither thrust me down 
Into this gloom of Tartarus profound. 
To sit in hateful office here confined, 

Inhabitant of heaven, and heavenly-born, 860 

Here in perpetual agony and |)ain, 
\\'\i\\ terrors and with clamors compassed round 
Of mine own brood, that on my bov«'els feed ? 

1 Outskirts. 2 Yielding; unresisting. 

3 "Like sheep they are laid in the grave; death shall feed on them" 
(Ps. xlix. 14). 

4 " Blessed his maw," i.e., his stomach blessed witli plenty. 



H MILTOX. [BOOK 11. 

Thou art my father, thou my author, thou 

My being gav'st me ; whom should I obey 865 

But thee ? whom follow ? Thou wilt bring me soon 

To that new world of light and bliss, among 

The gods who live at ease, where I shall reign 

At thy right hand voluptuous, as beseems 

Thy daughter and thy darhng, without end." 870 

Thus saying, from her side the fatal key. 
Sad instrument of all our woe, she took ; 
And, towards the gate rolling her bestial train,i 
Forthwith the huge portculhs ^ high updrew. 
Which, but herself, not all the Stygian powers 875 

Could once have moved ;^ then in the keyhole turns 
The intricate w^ards, and every bolt and bar 
Of massy iron or solid rock with ease 
Unfastens. On a sudden open fly, 

With impetuous recoil and jarring sound, 880 

The infernal doors, and on iheir hinges grate 
Harsh thunder, that the lowest bottom shook 
Of Erebus.4 She opened ; but to shut 
Excelled her power : the gates wide open stood, 
That with extended wings ^ a bannered host, 885 

Under spread ensigns marching, might pass through 
With horse and chariots ranked in loose array ; ^ 
So wide they stood, and like a furnace mouth 
Cast forth redounding ^ smoke and ruddy flame. 

1 " Bestial train," i.e., the lower snaky coils of her body. 

2 A strong grating suspended over a gate or doorway. It is made to move 
up and down in grooves in order to be dropped when danger threatens. 

3 Commentators find here the allegory, that, if a man abstain from sin, all 
the powers of hell cannot prevail with him. 

4 The realm of darkness. 

^ " Extended wings," i.e., without drawing in the wings to the main 
army. 

6 " Loose array," i.e., not in close compact order. 
" Overflowing, like waves. 



BOOK II.] PARADISE LOST. 85 

Before their eyes in sudden view appear 890 

The secrets of the hoary deep,i a dark 

inimitable ocean, witliout bound, 

Without dimension ; wb.ere length, breadth, and highth, 

And time, and place, are lost ; where eldest Night 

And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold 895 

Eternal anarchy, amidst the noise 

Of endless wars, and by confusion stand. 

For Hot, Cold, Moist, and Dry, four champions fierce, 

Strive here for mastery, and to battle bring 

Their embryon atoms. ^ They around the flag 900 

Of each his faction, in their several clans. 

Light-armed or heavy, sharp, smooth, swift, or slow, 

Swarm populous, unnumbered as the sands 

Of JBarca or Cyrene's^ torrid soil, 

Levied * to side with warring winds, and poise 905 

Their lighter wings. To whom these most ^ adhere 

He rules a moment : Chaos umpire sits, 

And by decision more embroils the fray 

By which he reigns : next him, high arbiter. 

Chance governs all. Into this wild abyss, 910 

The womb of Nature, and perhaps her grave,^ 

Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire, 

But all these in their pregnant causes mixed 

Confusedly, and which tlms must ever fight, 

Unless the almighty Maker them ordain 915 

His dark materials to create more worlds, — 

Into this wild abyss the wary fiend 

Stood on the brink of hell, and looked awhile, 

1 See Job x. 22, xli. 32. / 

2 " Embryon atoms," i.e., the atoms out of which the beginnings of things 
were made. 

3 Barca and Cyrene were Greek colonies in the north of Africa. 

4 Raised. 5 " These most," i.e., most of these. 

6 Milton suggests in this line that the world may again return to chaos. 



86 MILTON. [BOOK II. 

Pondering his voyage ; for no narrow frith 

Pie had to cross. Nor was his ear less pealed ^ 920 

With noises loud and ruinous (to compare 

Great things with small) than when Bellona- storms 

With all her battering engines, bent to raze 

Some capital city ; or less than if this frame 

Of heaven were falling, and these elements^ 925 

In mutiny had from her axle torn 

The steadfast earth. At last his sail-broad vans*^ 

He spreads for flight, and, in the surging smoke 

Uplifted, spurns the ground ; thence many a league, 

As in a cloudy chair, ascending rides 930 

Audacious ; but, that seat soon failing, meets 

A vast vacuity. All unawares. 

Fluttering his pennons^ vain, plumb down he drops 

Ten thousand fathom deep, and to this hour 

Down had been falling, had not, by ill chance, 935 

The strong rebuff of some tumultuous cloud. 

Instinct with fire and niter, hurried him 

As many miles aloft. That fury stayed, — 

Quenched in a boggy Syrtis,^ neither sea, 

Nor good dry land, — nigh foundered," on he fares, 940 

Treading the crude consistence, half on foot. 

Half flying; behooves him now^ both oar and sail. 

As when a gryphon ^ through the wilderness 

1 Stirred ; agitated. - The Roman goddess of war. 

3 The elements about ns. ^ Fans ; \\'ings. 

5 Pinions. The fluttering was vam ; for in the vacuit}- there was nothing 
to ofifer resistance. 

6 Quicksand. The name of an African quicksand in ancient times. 
'^ Ingulfed. 

^ " Behooves him now," i.e., he now has need. 

9 The gryphon, or griffin, was represented as eagle in the upper half, and 
lion in the lower half, of the body. The Greek historian Herodotus said that 
gold came in greatest abundance from the north of Europe, where it was stolen 
from the griffins by the Arimaspi, a one-eyed race of men. 



i;ooK II.] PA KADI SE LOS 7. 87 

With winged course, o'er hill or moory dale, 

Pursues the Arimaspian, who by stealth 945 

Had from his wakeful custody purloined 

The guarded gold : so eagerly the fiend 

O'er bog or steep, through strait, rough, dense, or rare, 

With head, hands, wings, or feet, pursues his way, 

And swims, or sinks, or wades, or creeps, or flies. • 950 

At length a universal hubbub wild 

Of stunning sounds and voices all confused, 

Borne through the hollow dark, assaults his ear 

W^ith loudest vehemence. Thither he jjlies 

Undaunted, to meet there whatever power 955 

Or spirit of the nethermost abyss 

Might in that noise reside, of whom to ask 

Which way the nearest coast of darkness lies 

Bordering on light ; when straight behold the throne 

Of C/iaos, and his dark pavilion spread 960 

Wide on the wasteful ^ deep ! With him enthroned 

Sat sable-vested N'ig/it, eldest of things, 

The consort of his reign ; and by them stood 

Orcus and Ades,- and the dreaded name^ 

Of Demogorgon ; Rumor next, and Chance, 965 

And Tumult, and Confusion, all embroiled, 

And Discord with a thousand various mouths. 

To whom Satan, turning boldly, thus: — "Ye powers 
And spirits of this nethermost abyss, 

Chaos and ancient Night, I come no spy 970 

With purpose to explore or to disturb 

1 Empty. 

2 " Orcus," i.e., the god of the underworld and death. While " Orcus " 
is Latin, " Ades," or " Hades " (which means " unseen "), is a Greek name 
for the unseen nether world and its god. 

3 " The dreaded name." This roundabout way of expressing the name of 
the mysterious divinity is in keeping with the old terror which the pronun- 
ciation of his name excited. 



88 MILTON. [BOOK II. 

The secrets ^ of your realm ; but, by constraint 

Wandering ^ this darksome desert, as my way 

Lies through your spacious empire up to h'ght. 

Alone and without guide, half lost, I seek 975 

What readiest path leads where your gloomy bounds 

Confine with •* heaven ; or, if some other place, 

From your dominion won, the ethereal King 

Possesses lately, thither to arrive 

I travel this profound.-^ Direct my course : 980 

Directed, no mean recompense it brings 

To your behoof, if I that region lost. 

All usurpation thence expelled, reduce 

To her original darkness and your sway 

(Wliich is my present journey ^), and once more 985 

Erect the standard there of ancient Night. 

Yours be the advantage all, mine the revenge ! " 

Thus Satan ; and him thus the anarch ^ old, 
With faltering speech and visage incomposed,^ 
Answered : — "I know thee, stranger, who thou art, 990 

That mighty leading angel, who of late 
Made head against^ heaven's King, though overthrown. 
I saw and heard ; for such a numerous host 
Fled not in silence through the frighted deep, 
With ruin upon ruin, rout on rout, 995 

Confusion worse confounded ; ^ and heaven gates 
Poured out by millions her victorious bands, 
Pursuing. I upon my frontiers here 
Keep residence ; if all I can will serve 

1 Secret places. 2 Wandering in or dirough. 

3 " Confine with," i.e., border on. 

4 Abyss. o Quest or object of my journey. 

6 Formed after the analogy of " monarch," and first used in print by Milton. 
"^ Disturbed ; disordered. 

8 " Made head against," i.e., opposed; offered resistance to. 
^ Force is gained by this pleonasm and the alliteration in this and the fore- 
going line. It is like Shakespeare's " make assurance doubly sure." 



BOOK II.] PARADISE LOST. 89 

That little which is left so to defend,^ 1000 

Encroached on still through our intestine broils 

Weakening the scepter of old Night : first, Hell,^ 

Your dungeon, stretching far and wide beneath ; 

Now lately heaven and earth, another world 

Hung o'er my realm, linked in a golden chain ^ 1005 

To that side heaven from whence your legions fell. 

If that way be your walk, you have not far ; 

So much the nearer danger.** Go, and speed ; 

Havoc, and spoil, and ruin, are my gain." 

He ceased; and Satan staid not to reply, loio 

But, glad that now his sea should find a shore, 
With fresh alacrity and force renewed 
Springs upward, like a pyramid of fire, 
Into the wild expanse, and through the shock 
Of fighting elements, on all sides round 1015 

Environed, wins his way ; harder beset 
And more endangered than when Argo -"^ passed 
Through Bosporus betwixt the justling rocks. 
Or when Ulysses on the larboard shunned 

Charybdis,^ and by the other whirlpool steered. 1020 

So he with difficulty and labor hard 
Moved on. With difficulty and labor he ; 
But, he once passed, soon after, when man fell, 
Strange alteration ! Sin and Death amain. 
Following his track (such was the will of Heaven), 1025 

Paved after him a broad and beaten way 

1 If all I can do will serve to defend that little which is left. 

2 " Hell" is the subject of " encroached," to be supplied. 

3 " Golden chain " may be here an allegorical reference to love, or order, 
or existence. / 

4 " Nearer danger," i.e., nearer your dangerous goal. 

5 In Greek story, the ship that carried Jason through the "justling 
rocks," Symplegades, to Colchis, in his quest of the golden fleece. 

6 Ulysses shunned Charybdis on the Sicilian side, and the other whirl- 
pool, Scylla, on the Italian side, when sailing down the strait. 



9° MILTON. [BOOK 11. 

Over the dark ab3-ss, whose boihng gulf 

Tamely endured a bridge ^ of wondrous length, 

From hell continued, reaching the utmost orb ^ 

Of this frail world; by which the spirits perverse 1030 

With easy intercourse pass to and fro 

To tempt or punish mortals, except whom 

God and good angels guard by special grace. 

But now at last the sacred influence '-' 
Of light appears, and from the walls of heaven 1035 

Shoots far into the bosom of dim Night 
A glimmering daw^n. Here Nature first begins 
Her farthest verge, and Chaos to retire. 
As from her outmost works,* a broken foe. 

With tumult less and with less hostile din ; 1040 

That''' Satan with less toil, and now with ease, 
Wafts ^ on the calmer wave by dubious hght. 
And, like a weather-beaten vessel, holds 
Gladly the port," though shrouds and tackle torn ; 
Or in the emptier waste, resembling air, 1045 

Weighs ^ his spread wings, at leisure to behold 
Far off the empyreal heaven, extended wnde 
In circuit, undetermined square or round. 
With opal towers and battlements adorned 

Of living^ sapphire, once his native seat, 1050 

And, fast by, hanging in a golden chain, 
This pendent world, ^*^ in bigness as a star 
Of smallest magnitude close by the moon. 
Thither, full fraught w-ith mischievous revenge, 
Accurst, and in a cursed hour, he hies. 1055 

1 The making of this bridge is told in Book X. 282-323. 
'^ The extreme circumference. 2 Inflowing. 

* " Outmost works," used with a military meaning; i.e., works without 
the main wall. 5 go that. 6 Wafts himself. 

'^ " Holds gladly the port," a classic phrase; i.e., keeps in harbor. 
^ Poises ; balances. ^ Vivid ; intense ; bright. 

1*^ Not our earth, but our universe. 



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